BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, ENGLAND—Members of a metal detecting club discovered a lead bucket filled with more than 5,000 silver Anglo-Saxon coins late last month. The coins, which feature the faces of Anglo-Saxon kings, including Ethelred the Unready and Canute, had been covered with two feet of earth. “They’re like mirrors, no scratching, and buried really carefully in a lead container, deep down. It looks like only two people have handled these coins. The person who made them and the person who buried them,” club leader Pete Welch told the Daily Record. Archaeologist Ros Tyrrell was called in to help excavate the 1,000-year-old coins. “When the coins have been properly identified and dated, we may be able to guess at why such a great treasure was buried,” added a spokesman from Bucks County Museum. To read about an early Anglo-Saxon kingdom, see "The Kings of Kent."
