One of the gold torcs, dating from between 400 and 250BC, discovered on Staffordshire farmland last year

It would have made Lance and Andy proud. The Iron Age gold jewellery found a year ago by the real-life counterparts of BBC Four’s Detectorists has been hailed as one of the ten most important discoveries of 2017 by a leading American journal. Noting that the three torcs — two necklaces and an armlet — and the two-strand twisted bracelet dating from 400-250BC are so “remarkable”, the Archaeological Institute of America’s Archaeology puts them alongside traces of Neanderthal DNA in caves across Europe and the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs as the notable finds of the year.

For several hundred years previously, Britons “appear to have largely abandoned wearing and manufacturing gold jewellery”, the journal notes. When iron supplanted bronze as the main metal for tools and