WILTSHIRE people are being urged to vote for gold Stonehenge artefacts as the country's finest treasure in an upcoming TV series.

Channel Five, now renamed Five, is currently preparing Britain's Finest, a series celebrating everything that is great about Britain. One of the programmes is about Britain's greatest archaeological treasures.

The gold artefacts were found in Bush Barrow, near Stonehenge, during an 1807 excavation by Devizes merchant William Cunnington.

The collection includes a gold item thought to be a belt buckle and an impressive gold breastplate.

Other candidates include the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Magna Carta, the Domesday Book and the Isle of Lewis chessmen.

Of these only the Bush Barrow hoard is housed outside London at Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes.

In a recent episode of the BBC 2 series Ancestors, presenter Julian Richards hailed the Bush Barrow collection as one of the most important finds ever made around Stonehenge, up until the discovery of the Amesbury Archer two years ago.

Dr Richards is one of the panel of experts who thrashed out the shortlist. Other jurors included Sir Roy Strong, Professor Barry Cunliffe and Carenza Lewis, a presenter on Channel Four's Time Team.

She said: "We wouldn't know anything at all about the culture of prehistoric Britain if it weren't for treasures like Bush Barrow.

"You have this incredibly fine gold workmanship. It's very easy to think of the Pre-Roman Britons as primitive, illiterate and generally inferior, but when you see these surviving objects, it contradicts the whole idea.

"English prehistory is so completely lost to us without these links to the past. And the Bush Barrow treasure is the best of those."

One of the most famous Bronze Age treasures in Europe, the hoard contains the regalia of a chieftain buried within sight of Stonehenge.

The hoard, which also includes earrings, daggers and a sceptre all dating to around 1600 BC, challenges any ideas about prehistoric Britons being primitive, poor and unable to craft beautiful, intricate objects.

Dr Paul Robinson, curator of Wiltshire Heritage Museum, said: "Bush Barrow deserves the title of Britain's finest treasure. The objects found in this 4,000-year-old tomb tell us a fascinating story."

To vote for the Bush Barrow collection, ring 0901 383 8510 or visit the Radio Times website.