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My Best Find Ever--Celtic Religious Offering
Hello Friends,
I just finished 8 days of glorious detecting in Bavaria with 4 buddies. Why Bavaria you ask? Of the 16 German States, Bavaria is the only one that lets you keep whatever you find (the land owner can ask for half though). We were detecting an old forest area (in the rain of course) and I saw giant boulders just ahead. A huge outcrop of rocks maybe 40 feet high. I thought this would be a good place to find some goodies. As I worked towards the rocks I could see that one of my buddies was ahead of me and had dug a few targets in the area. So I moved over to the left about 10 feet so I could take a different route than he had taken.
Almost immediately I got a very faint high tone signal. It was not strong enough to register any numbers on the display but it was a very sweet tone and it seemed to be an elongated signal. I thought this is either deep iron (giving a false high tone) or this is deep bronze. I dug down and immediately hit a layer of stones. At about a foot deep my pin pointer started beeping. I switched to using my small pointed digger to gently pick the dirt out of the rocks and roots. I lifted each stone out very carefully. All of a sudden I could see something green and round poking out of the bottom of the hole. I lifted it out and was so surprised I cursed out loud! It was a bronze spearhead in perfect condition. Rechecking the hole I heard more signals! I thought "could it be more spearheads?" A cache perhaps? Digging carefully I found 2 round bronze "blobs" and a beautiful bronze ring. The 2 blobs are probably casting waste (but still had value in those times). The purpose of the ring is unknown but may have been Celtic proto-money (along with the blobs). Anyway, these are late bronze age and probably date around 1500 to 1000 B.C. Although the exact purpose of these types of finds is unknown, most archeologists believe these were probably religious offerings to the Gods, perhaps for success in battle, or maybe a good harvest, etc.
