Llygadwy

Llygadwy is a site in SE Wales where one (or more) people appear to have been "salting" the environs of a natural spring with archaeological relics for reasons that can only be a matter of speculation. In the 2001 series of the popular Time Team series for UK television, the site is examined in some detail, and after some debate and the discovery of a number of artefacts, the fake nature of the site was soon demonstrated.

The site contains a spring to which artefacts of a range of ages - Bronze Age to Georgian - have been added to give it the semblance of being an important ritual centre. However one artefact in particular showed two important points of data : that the person (or persons) doing the "salting" did not appreciate stratigraphy, and that the "salting" took place after the mid-1980s. (For the details, it would be best to view the Time Team programme.)

What the purpose of the "salting" was remains obscure, but it may have been inspired by the construction of outbuildings "in the style of" ancient religious centres by a mid-19th century owner of the site. Again, the programme shows how this builder made errors in his construction which show that the building could not have been intended to be used for its apparent purpose. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to deceive, or a sort of homage by a person of antiquarian interests is obscure, and unlikely to be answered. However, the scale of the construction would have been difficult to conceal, so an innocent explanation is most plausible.

The anger-inducing aspect of the "salting" is that many of the artefacts used for this were genuine. Which means that they were removed from their original context (at sites as far afield as Switzerland), thus losing most of their archaeological information. Further, since the artefacts hadn't been recorded into the archaeological record previously, their presence on this site attests to significant plundering of unknown sites to feed a market for illicit archaeological artefacts. This aspect of the events at this site is treated with considerable contempt by the presenters of the programme, which again makes the programme recommended viewing for anyone considering buying archaeological relics.

External links

* Site
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&om=1&z=14&ll=51.884121,-3.234015&t=h Google Maps]

* Programme website : [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/archive/2001llyg1.html Channel 4 TV]