A man with a metal detector stumbled upon the remains of an ancient village near Lincolnshire, U.K. recently.
The remains of an Anglo-Saxon island were found by the man in Little Carlton near Louth, with archaeologists following up with more discoveries at the site.
Graham Vickers told the Lincolnshire Finds Liason Officer that he discovered a silver stylus that appeared to date back to the 8th century, the university said in a statement.
He and researchers later found other artifacts, including around 300 dress pins and some coins. They also found a small lead tablet, significant quantities of pottery, and butchered animal bone.
Later on, Dr. Hugh Willmott and Pete Townend from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology, visited the site to carry out targeted geophysical and magnetometry surveys along with 3D-modeling to visualize the landscape on a large scale.
“It’s clearly a very high-status Saxon site. It’s one of the most important sites of its kind in that part of the world. The quantity of finds that have come from the site is very unusual—it’s clearly not your everyday find,” Willmott told the Guardian.
Part of his work was digitally raising the water levels to bring it up to the height it would have been around the time the village was intact, , during the Middle Saxon period (660-899 A.D.)
“It [the site] is enclosed between a basin and a ditch,” Willmott said. “It was a focal point in the Lincolnshire area, connected to the outside world through water courses.”
