Rebecca Mead: The metal detectors who struck gold, and trouble - a podcast by RNZ

In 2015, a metre under English soil, two metal-detector enthusiasts (or detectorists) literally struck gold . They discovered an underground Viking treasure trove: a bangle, pendant and a ring, with a silver ingot plus hundreds of silver coins. Everything pointed towards their find being a hugely valuable 'hoard': a collection of valuables typically hidden to avoid looting by raiding parties. Such collections are subject to far tighter treasure-seeking controls than those applying to individual finds. So with question marks over their search rights over the land in question, they were faced with a dilemma. Their bumbling attempts to conceal the find are documented in Rebecca Mead's recent article 'The Curse of The Buried Treasure' in The New Yorker. Mead is a New Yorker staff writer and author of the critically acclaimed My Life in Middlemarch; a celebration of George Eliot, and the joys of literature.

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