A British Museum Spotlight Loan, Gathering light: a Bronze Age golden sun

'Gathering light' featured the extraordinary gold Shropshire sun pendant and other Bronze Age gold artefacts. The Lincoln Museum was a venue for A British Museum Spotlight Loan Gathering light: a Bronze Age golden sun, which was shown in the museum’s archaeology gallery from 11 November 2022 to 20 February 2023. Gathering light featured the extraordinary Shropshire sun pendant, a gold bulla over 3,000 years old.  It is one of the most significant pieces of Bronze Age metalwork ever discovered in Britain. The Spotlight Loan revealed the importance of the sun to the lives of Bronze Age ancestors. Accompanying the sun pendant were other spectacular gold objects, from a gold lunula discovered in an Irish bog to a hoard of Cornish gold torcs and rings.  The exhibition also featured Bronze Age objects from Lincolnshire, from gold penannular rings to hoards of bronze axes and tools. Visitors were able to find out more about the landscape and community at the time of the sun pendant, and artefacts recently discovered in Lincolnshire and recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. A short film by award winning animated documentary maker, Sam Moore, explored the story of the sun pendant from its sacrifice into water to its eventual finding. Image: Sun pendant, ornate side, © The Trustees of the British Museum. Associated events included Gathering light being the inspiration behind our Winter Solstice event which was held on 21 December 2022, a curator talk by the British Museum's Curator of Early Europe, Neil Wilkin. Gold in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland, and the Investigate Learning team included this fantastic exhibition in a Key Stage 2 Prehistory workshop experience day, as well as making Beaker pottery.