30,000 Objects recorded

As the PAS celebrates its 15th anniversary as a national scheme, the Leicestershire team have just surpassed 30,000 objects recorded! This achievement is only possible with the assistance of many volunteers over the years and the few self-recorders who are adding to the Leicestershire county total. The 30,000 objects sit in 19,181 records (i.e. coin …more

The other Bosworth (part 6 – Excavation)

Given the impressive geophysical results and the possibility of buried archaeology, we decided we needed to have a look under the surface. I recruited the help of Dr Julia Farley (then working at Leicester University) who obtained funding from the Roman Society, Roman Research Trust and the Association for Roman Archaeology. This allowed us to undertake a …more

The other Bosworth (part 5 -letting people know)

Having realised that we had a large and internationally important assemblage, we wanted to get it published. Because it was not a priority for the Battlefield Survey, I took up the baton (excuse the pun!). After discussing with colleagues it was agreed that the PAS database was a good place to record the site, as …more

The other Bosworth (part 4 -The horse and riders)

Some of our deposits could be associated with a god favoured by the military, especially the horse and rider plate brooches we were finding in large numbers. Before the survey started, we had 6 of these, already significant as the largest assemblage ever found was 8. By 2009 we had 73 ‘horse and rider’ brooches …more

The other Bosworth (part 3 the Roman Army)

Along with the coins (part 2) another major part of the assemblage was a really interesting collection of brooches. In total 216 brooches were recovered. During the survey I arranged an open day to view what we’d found. This included local interest groups, councillors and finds specialists as we needed some expert advice. One of …more

The other Bosworth (part 2 – the coins)

Among the substantial assemblage of Roman material found by our dedicated volunteer detectorists was a large collection of Roman coins. By the end over 800 had been recovered,  I helped to identify what I could, but  I had to call in the cavalry in the form of PAS advisors Dr Sam Moorhead and Dr Philippa …more

The other Bosworth (part 1 introduction)

In this series of 6 short blogs I am going to tell the story of what happens when you go looking for a medieval battlefield! The Bosworth Battlefield Survey, which ran for 4 years from 2005,  was a major HLF funded project  to locate the famous battle. It was very successful, but along the way, as is …more

Behind the Scenes with the PAS and Treasure Team at the British Museum

We are fortunate in Leicestershire that the county and Wendy Scott our FLO has been the initial catalyst for self-recording training during the pilot phase of the PASt Explorers project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Having attended a well organised training session at the University of Leicester to learn the basics of using the …more