Free Republic

He was a giant of a man, a chieftain who ruled with a royal sceptre and a warrior's axe. When they laid him to rest they dressed him in his finest regalia and placed his weapons at his side. Then they turned his face towards the setting sun and sealed him in a burial mound that would keep him safe for the next 4,000 years. In his grave were some of the most exquisitely fashioned artefacts of the Bronze Age, intricately crafted to honour the status of a figure who bore them in life in death. For this may have...

The pinhead-sized studs form an intricate pattern on the handle of a dagger, but archeologists failed to realise their significance when they excavated the burial mound in Wiltshire - known as Bush Barrow - in 1808. Now they are to be re-united with other priceless artefacts unearthed at the site and put on show at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes after Niall Sharples, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University turned out his predecessors' desk and discovered them in a film canister labelled Bush Barrow. In the 1960s, the gold was taken away for examination by Professor Richard Atkinson, a...