A collection of jewelry from the Bronze Age uncovered in Switzerland has been touted as a “sensational” discovery. It consists of a necklace with several spiked bronze discs, two gold rings, and over a hundred tiny amber beads. The stash of jewelry is believed to be 3,500 years old.
From the hoard, fourteen spiked discs were salvaged. The discs were typically worn by women during the Middle Bronze Age, around the year 1500 B.C.
Alongside the Bronze Age jewelry pieces were a fossilized shark’s tooth, a perforated bear tooth, a beaver tooth, a bronze arrowhead, lumps of polished iron ore, a rock crystal, and an ammonite shell, which is a type of extinct marine mollusk.
The finds were made in a freshly plowed carrot field in Güttingen, a municipality located in northeastern Switzerland. Franz Zahn, an amateur archaeologist, unearthed the treasures in August while removing scrap metal from the field.
When it came to the delicate amber beads, which were the size of pinheads, he used a pair of tweezers to fish them out of the soil.
He immediately reported his discovery to the Office of Archaeology. The very next day, experts arrived to recover the artifacts and survey the field.
Zahn had been combing the Güttingen area for years with his metal detector. In the past, he had made several other notable finds.
So when he came across some of the spiked bronze discs, he immediately recognized that he had found something of importance.
The team of archaeologists extracted a block of earth from the ground that contained the finds. The dirt was taken to a laboratory, where researchers busied themselves with removing the objects from the dirt.
The fascinating discovery raises questions about the possibility of a jewelry box being hidden at the site and whether the objects were souvenirs or something more.
Archaeologists are also speculating over the spiritual significance of the jewelry pieces, as items of that nature were often believed to have special healing powers and may have been worn as some kind of amulet.
Some of the artifacts were in a fragile state and are currently undergoing restoration before going on display in a local museum next year.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
