Bronze Age hoard found near Kidwelly declared treasure Published duration 24 February 2012

image caption The museum says the hoard shows the type of weapons and dress items worn nearly 3,000 years ago

A "significant discovery" of a Bronze Age artefacts in Carmarthenshire have been recorded as treasure.

The hoard of 13 bronze items found in a field at St Ishmael, near Kidwelly, last June, included a bracelet, fragments of a spearhead and an axe.

The artefacts are thought to have been buried about 1000 to 800BC, and were declared treasure by the Carmarthenshire coroner on Friday.

Carmarthenshire County Museum is keen to acquire the hoard.

Kevin Sawyer discovered the items while metal detecting in a field on 7 June last year, said the National Museum of Wales.

Learning more

The find was reported to the museum which carried out an archaeological investigation and found the artefacts had probably been buried together as a hoard in a small pit.

The beginning of the Bronze Age in Britain can be put about 2000BC, and is regarded as a crucial period that linked the Stone Age with the Iron Age.

Adam Gwilt, curator of Bronze Age collections at the National Museum Wales, said: "Through this and other recent finds, we are learning more about the kinds of places within landscapes where Bronze Age hoards were carefully buried.

"The spearhead and the bracelet show the kinds of weapons and personal dress items in use in west Wales at this time.

"The raw materials and casting by-products also within the hoard add to our wider picture of bronze casting towards the end of the Bronze Age."

New addition

Carmarthenshire County Museum, in Carmarthen, is keen to acquire the hoard following its independent valuation.

"We are pleased to have this opportunity to add something new to the prehistoric collections," said Gavin Evans, Carmarthenshire County Museum curator.

"The Bronze Age lasted hundreds of years, but we have little from that time in Carmarthenshire's past.