Precious Rosemarkie hoard lay forgotten for almost 3,000 years

Archaeologists say they have uncovered a precious hoard of bronze ornaments that were buried for safekeeping almost 3,000 years ago.

Nine neatly-packed items, including six bracelets, were unearthed along with evidence of several Bronze Age houses at a building site in Rosemarkie, a small village on the Moray Firth.

Archaeologists said analysis suggested the hoard’s original owners had only intended to keep the items hidden temporarily.

Rachel Buckley, of Guard Archaeology, which made the discovery, said: “The mystery then is not so much why this hoard was buried, but why the time never came for the Rosemarkie Bronze Age community to retrieve their valuable belongings.”

The hoard was uncovered during archaeological excavations carried out in 2020-21 ahead of new homes being built at Greenside in Rosemarkie.

The find was carefully removed and taken away for analysis. The results of the study have now been published.

The hoard was found to contain bronze objects that had been stacked one on top of the other, and were well-preserved.

A ring-shaped ornament adorned with 37 smaller rings had been placed on top of the stack.

The archaeologists said it was the “most complete and complicated” example of its type yet found in Scotland.

Also in the stack was a fragment of another ringed ornament, a curved object with cup-like shapes at each end and six bracelets.

Guard Archaeology said the items were protected by packaging made from bracken and bast – the inner bark of trees.

Ms Buckley said: “What makes the Rosemarkie hoard so significant is not just the metalwork – it’s the organic remains found clinging to it.”

The hoard was discovered at the site of a settlement where generations of people possibly lived over a period of 600 years during the Bronze Age.

Iraia Arabaolaza, another Guard Archaeologist, said: “Detailed examination of the radiocarbon dates suggests that the different roundhouses were not all occupied at the same time but represent a small community, perhaps a family lineage, building successive roundhouses, occupying different spaces in different periods across the site.”

Debris from metalworking was found at one of the roundhouses.

It included fragments of moulds used for manufacturing a sword, spearhead, sickle and bracelets.

The archaeologists looked at other Bronze Age hoards to better understand what they had found at Rosemarkie.

The different types include hoards containing damaged objects, stashed away by metalworkers to be recycled later.

There are also hoards made up of broken and apparently unwanted objects, and usually found dumped in bogs.

The archaeologists believe Rosemarkie’s is similar to more careful burials, and said the site would have been closely guarded.

Traces of human activity from Mesolithic and early Neolithic times, periods that came before the Bronze Age, were also found at the building site.

Those finds included a piece of bear bone and an axehead fragment.

Developer Pat Munro Homes funded the archaeological work.