用金属探测器发现的宝藏

用金属探测器发现的宝藏

You may think the lone treasure seeker scanning the sand with a metal detector at the beach seems a bit dorky — no offense to "detectorists," of course — but that only makes this revenge of the nerds all the sweeter.

你可能会认为，在海滩上用金属探测器扫描沙子的孤独寻宝者似乎有点傻——当然，我无意冒犯“侦探”——但这只会让书呆子们的报复更甜蜜。

These are pieces from the Staffordshire Hoard, an Anglo-Saxon treasure trove discovered by metal detector in 2009. (Photo: David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery [CC BY 2.0]/Wikimedia Commons)

The fine art of metal detecting gets a whole lot sexier when you read about what they found, like the retired businessman who unearthed the mother lode of Viking gold and silver artifacts dating back more than 1,000 years. Derek McLennan's find in October 2014 in Scotland, hailed as the country's most significant, was comprised of 100 items including a ninth century solid silver cross, a silver pot, gold objects, a rare silver cup engraved with animals that dates from the Holy Roman Empire, and a gold bird pin. It wasn't McLennan's first big find, either. The year prior, he found about 300 medieval coins in the same area.

当你读到他们的发现时，你会发现金属探测的艺术变得更加性感，比如一位退休的商人挖掘出了1000多年前维京人的金银制品的母矿脉。2014年10月，德里克·麦克伦南在苏格兰发现了被誉为该国最重要的文物，其中包括100件物品，包括一个九世纪的纯银十字架、一个银罐、一些金制物品、一个罕见的刻有神圣罗马帝国时期动物的银杯，以及一枚金鸟胸针。这也不是麦克伦南的第一个重大发现。一年前，他在同一地区发现了大约300枚中世纪硬币。

His efforts were handsomely rewarded. Three years later, he was awarded the equivalent of $2.5 million. He'd passed along his find to the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer's Remembrance, which makes rulings on items deemed not to have an owner, according to The Independent, and they set the price of his payment.

他的努力得到了丰厚的回报。三年后，他获得了相当于250万美元的奖金。据《独立报》报道，他将发现的物品转交给了女王和司库的纪念，后者会对被认为没有主人的物品做出裁决，并为他的付款设定价格。

You just never know what these modern-day prospectors might discover. With that in mind, we rounded up the more significant finds that have us thinking that maybe it's time to get a metal detector after all — name-calling be damned.

你永远不知道这些现代的淘金者会发现什么。考虑到这一点，我们收集了更有意义的发现，这些发现让我们觉得也许是时候买个金属探测器了——不要再骂人了。

In July 2009, metal detector enthusiast Terry Herbert decided to try his luck in farmland close to his home in Staffordshire in the English countryside. He came across an artifact, and bingo. Over the next five days, he found enough gold objects in the soil to fill 244 bags. An archeological expedition was hatched, and all told, the "Staffordshire Hoard" was found to contain some 3,500 pieces representing hundreds of complete objects. The cache of gold, silver and garnet objects from early Anglo-Saxon times represents one of the most important kingdoms of the era — and was valued at around $5.3 million.

2009年7月，金属探测器爱好者特里·赫伯特决定在英国乡村斯塔福德郡他家附近的农田里碰碰运气。他发现了一个人工制品，答对了。在接下来的五天里，他在土里发现了足够装满244袋金子的东西。一场考古探险已经开始酝酿，最终发现了“斯塔福德郡窖藏”，里面有3500件左右的物品，代表了数百件完整的物品。早期盎格鲁-撒克逊时代的黄金、白银和石榴石是当时最重要的王国之一，价值约530万美元。

A decade later, archeologists have put what they've learned about the extensive find into a book, "The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure," which also has an impressive online component with details and images about all 700 objects.

十年后，考古学家们把他们所了解到的大量发现写成了一本书，《斯塔福德郡窖藏:盎格鲁-撒克逊宝藏》(the stfordshire窖藏:An Anglo-Saxon Treasure)，这本书还有一个令人印象深刻的在线组件，包含了所有700件物品的细节和图片。