Burying valuables and valuable burials: The Adabrock Hoard, the Aird Dell Swords and other Bronze Age metalwork from western Scotland

Knight, Matthew G

Burying valuables and valuable burials: The Adabrock Hoard, the Aird Dell Swords and other Bronze Age metalwork from western Scotland

Resource type

Exhibition-related event

Creator (Person)

Knight, Matthew G

ORCID

Date published

April 2023

Abstract

Comunn Eachdraidh Nis (CEN) is pleased to announce the launch of a special exhibition on the 18th April 2023. Following a year of planning between CEN and The National Museum of Scotland, locally discovered Bronze Age finds will be returning to Ness. In 1910, an eclectic hoard of objects was recovered while peat digging near Adabrock. This hoard dates to the Late Bronze Age (c.1000-800 BC). It contains bronze axeheads, a spearhead, three razors and other tools, as well as fragments of a decorated vessel, two whetstones and rare beads of glass, amber and gold. It is one of the most diverse hoards in Britain. Two Late Bronze Age bronze swords were found on separate occasions while peat digging at Aird Dell in 1891 and 1892. These swords are characteristic of the period, bearing elegant ‘leaf-shaped’ blades. One sword is incomplete, whereas the other one is still complete and reasonably sharp, even after three thousand years in the ground. More remarkably, an original horn handle survives on the second sword with attachment rivets embedded in the hilt.