A coin expert said his eyes lit up when he saw 12 “rare” medieval gold coins, discovered with 616 silver pennies hidden in the wake of the Black Death.

The hoard was found during a metal detecting rally at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire in April 2019.

British Museum curator Barrie Cook said there had been only 12 known examples of the 1346 and 1351 Edward III gold nobles before the 2019 finds.

The coins have been declared treasure by Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court.

The hoard was unearthed by seven detectorists during Spring Detectival 2019, as first reported by the Bucks Free Press.

Dr Cook said the pandemic delayed identification, while he was also faced by the puzzle of whether he was looking at two separate hoards – one of gold coins and one of silver – and “until I look at them in detail, I couldn’t make that judgement”.

He is now convinced the same “poor bloke or woman – it could have been a woman – put this very large sum of money in a hiding place and couldn’t go back to it, so probably died”.

If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

Fresh evidence of the villa owners’ lavish lifestyle comes two years after a family found fragments of ancient pottery on a ramble through farmland in Rutland. Archaeologists from the University of Leicestershire, in partnership with Historic England and Rutland county council, later unearthed a rare mosaic depicting Homer’s Iliad.

The finding – now protected by the government – was described as “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century”.

A hungry badger is thought to have unearthed the largest collection of Roman coins ever to have been discovered in northern Spain, reports say.

The treasure trove was discovered close to the den of an animal in the municipality of Grado, Asturias.

The animal is thought to have uncovered the treasure as it desperately searched for food last winter, a harsh one.

Heavy snowfall affected the region when Storm Filomena hit last year.

In a desperate attempt to find some food, it is thought that the animal – which researchers believe could be a badger – inserted its legs into a small crack opening next to its refuge.

But it found no use for the old coins and abandoned some of the pieces in front of its den.

The 209 pieces were then found by two archaeologists when they went to visit the cave of La Cuesta with a local resident, according to a report recently published in an archaeological journal.

The collection of rough coins turned out to be an “exceptional find” dating from between the 3rd and 5th Centuries AD.

The coins are thought to have been forged in places as far away as Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey) and Thessaloniki, Greece, according to one of the researchers who spoke to Spanish newspaper El País.

Historical discoveries could be at risk if government does not put archaeology at the heart of its new planning reforms, experts have warned.

Archaeologists, academics and professional bodies have launched a campaign to ensure their work with developers remains a legal requirement.

It has the backing of TV academics Prof Alice Roberts and Dan Snow, along with a number of MPs and peers.

The government said it was “determined to protect archaeological treasures”.

Boris Johnson first announced his proposals for reform of the planning system in England last year, with the aim of stopping local opponents blocking development in designated “growth” zones.

The Planning Bill was then confirmed in the Queen’s Speech in May – with the promise of a vote in Parliament in the coming year.

But there has already been disquiet on the Conservative benches over concerns it could side-line locals and lead to a “free for all” for development.

Now archaeologists are concerned that the current rigorous assessments required by developers – laid out in law in 1990 by the then-Conservative government – are missing and they want guarantees the bill will include them, else heritage in the country could be lost.

A mass grave containing the remains of dozens of victims of the Black Death offers chilling new evidence of the speed and scale of the devastation the plague brought to rural England, according to archaeologists.

The grave, discovered in a remote corner of rural Lincolnshire, has been dated to the 14th century, almost certainly to the earliest and deadliest medieval outbreak of the disease in 1348-9.

It contained the bodies of at least 48 men, women and children who were laid in a sandy pit within days of each other. DNA tests on the bodies found the plague pathogen, confirming how they died.

About half the population of England was wiped out within 18 months by the 1348-9 pandemic. Perhaps surprisingly, however, direct archaeological evidence for the Black Death is extremely rare, according to Hugh Willmott, senior lecturer in European historical archaeology at the University of Sheffield, who led the excavation.

While a small number of plague mass graves have been excavated in London, he said, nothing comparable has ever been found in a rural context, making this a discovery of national importance. Analysis of the find, made in 2013, has been published for the first time in Antiquity.

The grave was discovered by chance during a survey of the now-ruined Augustinian priory of Thornton Abbey, close to Immingham in north Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. Nearby, archaeologists found the site of a medieval hospital attached to the priory, suggesting the dead or dying had been brought there in desperation as the plague struck, overwhelming the canons who were then forced to bury them together.

The first clue was provided by moles. As the creatures burrowed beneath a farmer’s field close to the border between England and Wales, they threw up fragments of what appeared to be medieval pottery.

Stuart Wilson, an archaeology graduate who was working in a toll bridge booth, took a gamble and bought the field for £32,000 when he could have been investing in his first house.

Over the past 15 years he and a hardy band of volunteers have painstakingly unearthed what they believe are the remains of a sprawling medieval city.

Wilson, 37, is preparing for an exciting 2017. When the weather improves he and his colleagues will continue their work on the site, focusing particularly on what he says is the skeleton of a moated manor house.

He is applying for planning permission for an interpretation centre to tell visitors about the lost city of Trellech, and for a campsite for tourists and helpers.

After facing years of scepticism from some within the archaeology community, he is now being listened to seriously. Before Christmas he was invited by Cardiff Archaeological Society to speak at Cardiff University.

Wilson said his decision to buy the land had been vindicated. “People thought I was mad and really I should have bought a house rather than a field,” he said. “But it turned out to be the best decision of my life. I don’t regret it at all.”