Front of a publication by the Belgian National Archaelolgical Ministry showing the three Celtic burial urns found at Wijshagen, Belgium, in 1986 and 1987.

Statue of the Celtic burial urn I found. The statue is in front of the church building in Wijshagen, Belgium.

While Bob DiBella was digging up the bronze pin of a 2,000 Roman woman (see previous post) I was zeroing in on a deep and loud signal from my metal detector just a few yards away. I had a very high-tech Garrett detector so I was able to detect metal objects easily. I knew from the tone and strength of the signal that whatever was buried below my feet was deep and rather large. That meant it was probably very old and probably Roman!  My heart started beating faster as the beeps on my detector got louder.

The soil at this place was very sandy. There were no rocks. The archaeologists who had been working the site for the previous two summers had removed all the grass and topsoil. It was very easy to dig for buried objects. I slowly began to remove soil from the place under the search coil of my detector. As usual, I started with a small hole. After a couple of scoops I found nothing so I checked the area with my detector again. The signal I got told me there was definitely something there, just deeper. I enlarged the hole and continued to dig carefully so as not to damage whatever was in the soil. I continued to check the growing hole every six inches or so but I still didn’t find what was making my detector send out the signals. The deeper I dug the louder and stronger the signals got and the more excited I got. I enlarged the radius of the hole and continued to dig deeper. At one foot, still nothing–clean sandy soil. At two feet, still nothing–a louder signal still, but no metal yet. At one yard the detector was screaming at me and I finally saw a circular green stain about ten inches across. Now I was really excited. There are only two metals that make green stains when buried for a long time–copper and bronze. I enlarged the hole even more and after just a few more inches of digging I saw the round metal object that made the green stain. I knew immediately it was some kind of bucket and I knew for sure it was as old as the Roman coins that had been found above it just the day before.

I very carefully excavated around the object. As more of it was exposed I saw that it was indeed a bucket. It had horizontal ridges down the sides, much like a modern metal coffee can. There were also metal loops attached on the top lip of the bucket where a handle had been attached at one time. As I dug down around the bucket and started finding bronze items laying all around it–there were twenty in all. Another object near the bucket was a twisted bronze handle for the bucket. I also found a big (fist-sized) blob of rusted iron near the base of the bucket. Although I had never seen one, I was sure that I had found a first century Roman burial urn.

While I was still clearing the dirt from around the bucket and before I removed it from the ground a car pulled up and a Belgian father and son got out and came to see what we were doing. The man started speaking in Flemish and when I said I only spoke English his teenage son began to translate for us. The man asked what we were doing. I told him we were metal detecting and that we had the permission of the national archaeologists to look for coins and things at the site. He said something about us having a pretty big and deep hole for just some coins. He walked over and looked down into the hole. When he saw the exposed bucket he asked what it was and I told him I thought it was an old bucket. He smirked and said that it was probably only one or two hundred years old. I told him I thought it was older, and he said that it was probably nothing important because they’d found things going all the way back to Neolithic times at this site in the past. When he looked closer and saw the bucket clearly and the twenty bronze items I’d found around it, he told me I should probably stop until he could get an archaeologist to look at it. He said he was a member of the local archaeological society and he knew of an archaeology student who lived nearby. They got in their car and drove off.

I told Bob that that was probably going to be the end of it for us. I was sure they would take the bucket and the bronze pieces. I continued cleaning the dirt from around the bucket and then I removed it and the bronze pieces from the hole and set them at the edge of the hole. The bucket was full of sandy soil so I dug into the center of the bucket and began to remove some of the dirt. A little over halfway down in the bucket I came to a layer of gray ash and pieces of bones. I knew for sure then that what I had found was a burial urn. A few minutes later they returned. A young man, Guido Creemers, was with them. He was an archaeological student. He ran over to the bucket and started talking very quickly about how he had to take the bucket and all the bronze pieces and give them to his professor. He gently bundled everything into a cardboard box, put the box in the trunk of the other man’s car, and they drove off. I was sure that was the last I’d see of my mysterious bucket.

The next day I was coming out of a meeting on the military base when a Belgian military officer approached me and asked me if I knew the man who had found an old bucket with a metal detector a few days before. I told him I was the man and asked him if there was a problem or if I was in some kind of trouble. He said he didn’t know anything, only that someone from the Belgian Department of Archaeology had contacted them and asked them to get the name and phone number of the American military guy who had found the old bucket with a metal detector. I gave him the information and immediately began to worry.

That evening I got a call from a man named Luc van Impe. He identified himself as the head of ancient burials for the Department/Ministry of Archaeology of the Belgian government. He wanted to ask me some questions about the urn that I’d found. I immediately asked him if I was in any trouble. I told him that my friend, Rich Evans, had received verbal approval from the archaeologists who had been at the site for two years before we started detecting there. Mr. van Impe told me he wanted to explain the Belgian law about metal detecting on public property. Then he said that there wasn’t any law! He said I wasn’t in any trouble because the law in place at the time said that I could search and dig on any public property and I could keep anything I found. (NOTE:The law concerning hobby metal detecting has changed in Belgium. It is now very difficult for a hobbyist with a metal detector to get permission to search. Please consult local authorities or the nearest museum in Belgium if you go there and want to metal detect.) Mr. van Impe said he wanted to come visit me to ask questions about what I saw as I was digging the urn out of the ground. The problem was that archaeologists want things left in situ, which means that they want to record how they are in the original soil before they are carefully removed. All of that information was gone because I removed the urn, the handle, the iron blob, and the twenty bronze items before Guido Creemers arrived. I gave him my address and he said he’d be over the next night to talk. Before he hung up he asked me how I knew to detect where I was detecting. I began to explain how my friend, Rich Evans, who lived near the site had asked me to detect there. He interrupted me and said, “No, how did you know to search there?” I again began to explain about finding some Roman coins there the day before and that’s why I returned to the same general area. Again he interrupted me and asked, “No, how did you know to search in that exact spot?” I told him I had gotten a signal on my detector that sounded rather large and deep so I started digging. He was silent for a moment and said, “Oh, you must have been using an American military mine detector.” I assured him I was using a commercial hobby detector (My detector was a hobby detector, but it was one of the best on the market at the time.). He said that was impossible and asked again how I knew to dig in that exact spot. I again assured him that I had just picked up the signal with my detector and began digging. He was incredulous and began to ask again but then he said, “I find it almost impossible to believe that you could detect the urn with a commercial hobby metal detector because the archaeological student told me the hold was over a meter deep (over three feet). I explained that the Garrett metal detector I was using was one of the best on the market and it had indeed detected the urn at that depth. He asked where I got it and I told him I ordered it through the mail from a company in Florida. He was dumbfounded. He told me that he found it very difficult to believe that such a detector could find things so deep because his archaeologists had tried using detectors some years before and they just didn’t work well. The truth is that detector technology improves almost as quickly as computer technology so my detector was light years ahead of the ones they would have used five or ten years before.

Again he asked if he could come visit to talk about the find. We scheduled a time for the next night. Then he said, “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused by finding the urn?” I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about because he had just told me that it was legal for me to search and dig up what I detected. He said I caused trouble for him and his colleagues because the urn wasn’t supposed to be there. I had no idea what he meant and asked him to explain. He said, “The urn shouldn’t be where you found it!” That just didn’t make sense and I said, “You knew this was a Roman site so why shouldn’t there be a Roman burial urn at a first century Roman site?” He said, “Oh no! That’s the problem–it isn’t a Roman urn, it’s a Celtic urn.” I was surprised because I found it a meter below what had been proven to be a Roman roadside rest area and maybe even a temple site. But I asked him why it would be such a big problem because it was Celtic instead of Roman. He said, “The problem is that they weren’t here then. And, it isn’t from the first century, it’s from the fifth century B.C.” He went on to explain that before I found the urn there had never been any archaeological evidence that the Celts had been in that part of Belgium at that time in history. He said that a farmer had found a Celtic urn from about the same period on the southern Belgian border with France in the last century but nothing like this had been found so far north (I found the urn about 30 miles south of the northern Belgian border with the Netherlands). He said that my find of the urn had just upturned everything they had believed about where the Celts were in the fifth century B.C.

The next evening Mr. van Impe came to my house as he said he would. As soon as he came in and got comfortable he said he wanted to explain something to me. He told me again that there was no law in Belgium prohibiting me from keeping the urn and all the objects I found around it. He said it was mine to keep. I thought just a second or two and then I told him I couldn’t keep it. I told him it needed to be preserved, studied, and then put on display in a Belgian museum for the Belgian people to see. I thought he was going to start crying. He said that the Belgian government wasn’t allowed to pay me for the urn. I told him I didn’t want any money, I just wanted to give it to the people who should have it–the people who could preserve it and appreciate it. He thanked my profusely! We spent the next hour or so talking about how I found the urn and what I saw as I dug down into the soil. He sketched out a picture as I explained. I told him his sketch pretty well represented how the urn was positioned in the ground and how the bronze objects were positioned around it. Before he left he thanked me again for giving it to the archaeologists from the Belgian government. I assured him it was what I wanted to do but I did ask him for a few considerations from him. I asked if I could have the permission of the Belgian government to search on any public land in Belgium without interference from any government officials. He told me that I could and that if anyone ever stopped me to just tell them that I was an amateur archaeologists working with him and to have them call him for confirmation. I also asked I could receive credit for finding the urn and turning it over to the proper Belgian officials. He said that my name would be mentioned in any article he wrote about the find. He also told me that I would never have to pay to enter any museum in Belgium. He said all I had to do was tell the people at the museum that I worked with him and I’d be let in for free forever. During our discussion about the urn I told him about the ring and coins I’d found the day before I found the urn and about the pin of the Roman woman Bob DiBella had found. He asked if he could take these things so they could study and record them. I told him I’d have to get the pin from Bob but I gave him the ring and the coins. He promised all things would be returned to us, and they were. He also told me that they were immediately going to reopen the archaeological dig at the site where I found the urn. Also, they were going to come back the next summer to excavate four burial mound located within a thousand yards of the urn. They knew about the mounds before but didn’t excavate them because they assumed they were Roman burials from the first century and most Roman burials from that period were open cremations–the ashes and remaining bone fragments weren’t gathered up and put into any kind of container, they just piled a mound of earth over the cremation site to commemorate the dead person.  Mr. van Impe promised to keep in touch with me, thanked me again, and left.

Word of my find spread quickly. I had an older Belgian friend who was also a treasure hunter. He usually didn’t use a detector but he had an uncanny knack for finding ancient artifacts in the ground. I had been to his house several times and he had quite a collection of artifacts from prehistoric to modern times. He contacted me when he heard I’d found the urn and asked me to come to his house. When I arrived he very aggressively told me that the urn was mine and I should ask for it back from the Belgian archaeological officials. I told him I had given it to them and I would not ask for it back. He again told me that the law was on my side and if I asked for it back they had to give it to me. I told him I wouldn’t and asked him why he was so insistent that I get it back. He said he wanted to buy if from me and he’d pay me $1,000. I assured him I wouldn’t ask for it back because it was historically important and I’d already donated it to the Belgian government. He finally sighed and stopped asking me to try to get it back. I knew he bought and sold antiquities and I was sure he didn’t want to buy it for his own collection. I smiled and asked him, “If I got it and sold it to you, who would you sell it to and for how much?” He said, “You really aren’t going to ask for it back, are you?” I told him I wasn’t so it was his turn to smile. He said he had a buyer in Amsterdam who had already offered to buy it from him. He said he could probably get $20,000 to $30,000 for it. After I caught my breath I just smiled at him but in my heart I knew I’d done the right thing. However, one fleeting thought ran through my mind, “A new Corvette cost about $30,000…hmmm!” (Remember, this was 1986 and that was the price of a Corvette then.)

They did an immediate excavation of the immediate area where I found the urn. They dug up the ground for about five meters in every direction and dug deeper than I’d found the urn but they found nothing else of any consequence. The next summer the archaeologists returned to dig up the four mounds located nearby. In two of the mounts the found open cremations but in the other two they found other bronze Celtic burial urns. After they analyzed all three urns, the ashes and bones, and the bronze and iron pieces I found with my urn (there was nothing buried with the other two urns), they determined that all three urns had had other uses before they were used as burial vessels. The one I found had been a cista. Click on these links to read about ancient cistas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cista; http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/b/bronze_casket_cista.aspx. They also said that they believed all three burials should be considered aristocratic burials because of the bronze urns used for the cremation remains. The larger of the two other urns they believe belonged to a Celtic chieftain, the smaller one probably belonged to his wife. They believe mine was the son of the chieftain. The other two urns predate mine by up to fifty years. These three “royal” burials in one location indicate there probably was a settlement nearby. The archaeologist had no idea of such a settlement this far north at this early date and they continue to search for it. As far as I know, they haven’t found any other evidence of a permanent Celtic occupation in the area of the urn. The archaeologists also discovered that the bone fragments in my urn were from a human and a horse. Obviously, the man buried in my urn was a warrior whose horse was killed and cremated with him. All three urns date to the 5th/4th century before Christ. They determined that the lump of rusty iron I found with the urn was the horses iron bit. They have been able to restore it pretty well, considering how long it had been buried. They also think that the cista originally had two twisted bronze handles, even though I found only one with it. Some of the bronze ornaments I found with the urn were attachment pieces for the horses bridle. Others were finial ends for sticks. However six or eight of the items are still a mystery to the archaeologists. These were hollow, round bronze orbs about the size of large grapes. Each of them had two hollow tubes protruding from them about 90 degrees. They said they had never seen such items associated with Celtic burials or any other ancient burials. They have no idea of their original purpose. All three of the buckets have been professionally restored by the Belgian National Museum. They are on permanent display in the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren, Belgium (see the webpage for the museum at: http://www.gallo-romeinsmuseum.be/index.php –sorry, it isn’t in English– you can see a quality photo of my urn and one of the other urns at this page of their website: http://www.gallo-romeinsmuseum.be/content.php?hmID=1839&smID=1711&ssmID=189 ). There is also an archaeological report about the Wijshagen urn field in French at: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/pica_0752-5656_1998_num_1_1_2267. They have some drawings of the bronze items I found with the urn in this article.

Mr. van Impe was good to his word. Soon after our initial meeting (we had several more over the next few months) I received a letter from the Belgian government, thanking me for turning the urn and the bronze pieces over to “the rightful owners”–the Belgian people. He also later sent me some very beautiful, professional photos of the urn and bronze items I found as well as a photo of all three urns together. Unfortunately, these photos are in storage in Texas now so I can’t attach them to this article. A couple of years after I found the urn I got a booklet in the mail from Mr. van Impe. It was a professional report on the Wijshagen urns. Mr. van Impe indeed gave me credit for finding the cista and turning it over to the Belgian authorities, as he promised he would. Another article was printed about the urns and my name and military rank was listed in the footnotes as the finder of the first Celtic urn at Wijshagen. I took Mr. van Impe up on his offer to visit museums in Belgium and get in for free. I used his name to get into the National Museum in Brussels while I was still stationed there in the late 1980s. In 1995 I took a group of college students on a short mission trip to Eindhoven in the Netherlands for six weeks. Our group made a trip down to Tongeren to visit the Gallo-Roman Museum where my urn was. I told them I was the amateur archaeologist, working with Mr. Luc van Impe, who found the Wijshagen urn. They welcomed me very warmly and invited me into the museum without paying. However, we did have to pay the entrance fee for the three students who were with me.

Mr. Guido Creemers, the young archaeological student who came to take the urn from me on the day I found it, is now the Director of the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren. You can see a story about him which includes a nice color photo of him leaning against the display case that contains the urn and bronze pieces I found. The story is at: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=RN2AIM4T

One final, interesting note about finding this urn. My second daughter, Julie, is married to Philippe Frerot, who is Belgian. They have three children. They can say that their American grandfather is responsible for helping rewrite the ancient history of their native country, Belgium. How about that?