text: Antiquarian interest in the gold artefacts of prehistory emerged in the British Isles during the Early Modern period. In 1696, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, southern England obtained the Ballyshannon Disk, the first such artefact of its type in their collection, although in ensuing centuries they would gain a number of other items to accompany it. The British Museum in London would follow suit almost a century later, gaining its first Bronze Age gold artefact, a disk from Kirk Andrews on the Isle of Man, in 1782.