For a mixture of reasons, we have had a slow start to the second part of our 2024/2025 season.

In November 2025 whilst out detecting on a permission we have had for 5 years we arranged a meeting with the landowner who we'd never met.
His farmhouse was easily visible from the field we were in as it's farmed by one of his tenants.
After a quick call to him we agreed a time and set off.

We were greeted by his wife and invited in for a cup of tea as the landowner wasn't there. I looked at my 'phone (I'd put it on silent mode entering the house) and saw that he'd text me saying he was going to be 30 minutes late.
We had a lovely chat with his wife and son, and showed them some of the finds we had made that day and pictured from other surveys that are stored on our online image website, Flickr.

He arrived and looked at our field images of the surrounding farmhouse and other farms he owned about 15 miles away.
He advised us to look at the ones in stubble as the ones around the house were shooting grounds and would be unavailable until the end of January 2025.
He also said we'd split anything of value 50/50 and to fill our boots!
When the other fields are available in February 2025, he said "knock yourselves out".

March 1st arrived which saw our first chance of visiting these new fields.
The field we chose had been drilled the previous October with Winter Wheat.
We hit a hotspot which produced some Roman pottery and 26 Roman coins.
There wasn't much iron or lead which we found quite odd when looking at the amount of other evidence found.

By 3pm we were worn-out with the soil being quite 'sticky' earlier on in the day adding extra weight to our wellingtons.

​All the HD images can be seen here.

We've got off to a bumpy start for the coming season with no surveys as of yet.
The only outing as such was the annual dig at our site in Yorkshire in August last.

We had a Skype meeting and made a rough plan for the way forward.
Part of that plan was to arrange a meeting with a landowner who has land that we'd part surveyed.
Checking the land under Stewardship amounts to 2500 acres spread over a wide area.
We've identified at least four areas with Roman and Iron Age activity with one being a large IA burial ground.

Coincidentally, we're visiting a neighbour of his to check part of a 23ha field that has a Roman ladder settlement in it.
​Fingers crossed that we can come back with a report that will spring us back on track for a pleasant season ahead.

We were kindly invited to survey at a site in Gloucestershire in the search for a lost Medieval village.
Five trenches were in place with one of them producing building remains.
Two Medieval coins had been recovered, one on this dig with the other coming up during last year's dig.

We checked out several areas at random (time was short) with no evidence of Medieval nor English Civil War items.
Normally, detectorists are overwhelmed with musket balls, but not one came up on this day. Strange that the castle was attacked by 500 Parliamentary troops, then used as a campsite for Charles Ist.

The coinage that did come up was all decimal showing that the grounds had been used by the public from 1971.

Hopefully, we'll return to survey an area away from the archaeologists current centre of focus and find the clues that are missing.

It's interesting to see the phycology behind metal-detectorists ways of thinking and applied methodology to achieve their dreams and desires.

Some dream of finding riches beyond their wildest dreams.
Others, more realistically, desire to find things such as a Medieval hammered coin or Roman brooch for instance.

The first prerequisite is to actually search where there are actually these objects in the ground.
I know that sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many detectorists will search areas without even researching if there's been any history there at all.
I also accept that some may be very, very lucky indeed, and find something that satisfies the two above dreams/desires.

The research thing has been covered in an earlier post.

So, lets look at the search technique side of things.

All detectorists know that you have to walk over an object (within detector parameters) to find it.
What is humorous is that many detectorists would love a detector that could go an inch or two deeper, yet neglect that that their coils miss several inches, if not several feet to either side of the coil.
This is caused by a detection method called 'snail-trailing' or a random walk in the countryside.
Using the 'snail-trail' method results in the detectorist missing several square feet of the search field/area. This could amount to at least 50% of the field!
You can imagine just how many possible Medieval hammered coins could be hidden in those missed areas.
This is where you get the scenario when a detectorist has searched a field for 20-years and never found much and all of a sudden, they find that hammered/Roman coin.

There is a simple formula that will let you know how long it will take to search a field/area so that you know how long it will take to cover that field/area FULLY.

Here goes..... it will take you a MINIMUM of four-and-a-half hours to search ONE acre fully, minimum, and that's without digging a signal!
So, that's 0.22 (about a fifth) of an acre each hour or 900 square metres.

This is the easy bit..... a 10-acre field WILL take a minimum of FOURTY-FIVE hours to search FULLY without stops.

It's amazing how many detectorists will say that they've "battered" a 10-acre field in quarter of a day.............

On Saturday, we are going in completely the opposite direction to last weekend and heading to Shropshire to investigate a Roman fort there.

The landscape is full of different time periods but we're looking for mainly Roman evidence and the possibility of a little Medieval history too.
At the corner of the Roman field is farm that used to be a hall back in the 1200's and was still in use as a hall in the Tudor period.
A quick recce revealed C16th pottery so thats the Tudor box ticked.

The fields are all harvested and are in the process of being drilled.

This is another new permission on a shooting estate and covers quite an area and one which I wrote to about 5 years ago!

​So, fingers crossed, we may find some of that Roman and Medieval evidence just below the surface of the new crop.....

We headed up to Scotland via Edinburgh to a site that may have been an Early Medieval monastic settlement.
Unfortunately, we didn't find any evidence outside the existing farm buildings of any Early Medieval artefacts, or  indeed, any artefacts of note.

There are however some lovely crop marks that now look to be prehistoric.
We're sure that a full excavation will reveal its secrets.

On a brighter note, the chap we are working with (Dr James) had other sites that require investigation.
One of these jumped out as a great contender with super crop marks and further supporting evidence.

We set off for the new destination and arrived 35 minutes later at a church just above the field of interest.
The church itself 'looks' quite modern but actually dates back to at least the C11th.
We tracked down the landowner and had a very informative chat with him.
He agreed to an initial survey and gave us some great intel about the field and the general area.
He also mentioned that other detectorists had been on the field and found some items there.
One of these items was a gold artefact he said dated to the Celtic period so we'll look into that to verify its date and identification.

There is also evidence that the Vikings were here too!

​We'll have a report on this site after we visit it in three weeks time after the crop has been harvested.

The day began with a mix of cloud then blue sky, and hot sunshine.

The 'Big Yellow Trowel' arrived at 8am on Monday and began cutting the first of three trenches over what we thought might be a Roman shrine.

The first (and largest trench) started to reveal archaeology on the first cut!
The trench is roughly the shape of the capital letter 'F' and has what looks like robbed-out wall's, two hearth's, a roundhouse, pits, pottery, ditches with burnt items and lots of metal artefacts. These include 38 coins from the spoil heap, what may be at least three small coin hoards and a crossbow style brooch.

​The other two trenches are exploratory cuts, one has no apparent features at present, and the other has two pits/ditches, the brooch was recovered from the latter trench in one of the pits. 
This suggests that this trench is perhaps C3rd to C4th in date too.

The first trench cuts through an area where we recovered several Roman coins and lovely fragments of small base sherds.
it was our belief that small amounts of coinage was buried within the small pots as votive offerings.
Judging by the 30+ coins from one small area on the spoil heap, and lots of signals in the trench, it looks like there may be some of these hoards still in situ.
​Each flag in the image below represents at least one coin or multiples of coins!

This image shows the Roman crossbow fibula in situ.

Here is one of the coins sitting on the trench floor surface.

Some of the eager volunteers being instructed on which parts of the trench to start cleaning back.

We're back on-site this coming Saturday and Sunday so hopefully there'll be some nice updates to come......

Today we had a trip in another direction to a county we've neglected for a while now.
This was a recce to suss where the access points are for the fields we need to survey later this year after harvest.

We arrived at the end of the lane that leads to all the fields we need to survey and within minutes the owner of the nearby stunning property arrived to ask who we were. When I say this property is stunning, I mean stunning.
He very kindly advised us where we could park.

We donned some waterproofs as it was quite wet.
A circuit around field didn't reveal too much about the Roman activity there.
The size of the Roman fort there is breath-taking as is the scenery.
We also looked at the field next to it that holds three Roman marching camps.
Oddly enough, we came across a scatter of fish scales in one of the tractor tracks. I commented that it was either an Osprey or Otter, both species were discounted as it was too far from a water source and Ospreys don't habit this area.
WRONG! We stopped at a strategic position to view the area, and low and behold, TWO Ospreys were sat in a tree by the waters edge!
Other birds encountered were; Red Kite, Buzzard, Sedge Warbler, Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Chiff Chaff and Spotted Flycatcher to name a few.

There is much to be done to explore the Roman fort area as well as the marching camps as they all cover a huge area, all under crop at the moment.

Watch this space in August/September this year.

Here we are in July 2024 and still waiting for Spring to happen!
It's been a very cold, windy and wet Spring indeed with not many outings looking for wildlife in the UK which is my other passion.

Anyway, on the detecting front, there's not much activity now that the crops are advancing.
However, we are now looking to the new 2024/2025 season that is now upon us.
One of the things we've decided is that quite a few of our sites are now proving more difficult in the retrieval of artefacts for recording.
So, with that in mind, we have created a list of potential new sites around the UK.

Ironically, we obtained permission in 2020 for a site that is within a 2000-acre estate but because of Covid-19 and the very wet winters/springs we didn't follow it up.
Fast forward to July 2024, and after a quick email to the landowner and a quick reply back we were invited to carry out a survey after harvest this year!
We are so looking forward to this as there is promise of Roman history there as well as Medieval too.

We have also been invited to an archaeological dig at a Roman fort which is happening as I write this.

​Hopefully there will be updates on the dig as well as news on any other permissions we are lucky to obtain.

We had permission to search a large field (69-acres) that the farmer said was "worked" and was "quite flat".
However, when we got there, it didn't look that flat but we gave it a couple of runs. It was too rough to walk on and besides, we were losing a lot of depth due to the deep furrows.

We decided to contact another farmer a few miles away as we knew he had a 50-acre field that was flat a couple of weeks ago.
We got there and it was very flat with only the very small ridges showing where the drill had been in contact with the soil.

It wasn't long before the first of 69 Roman coins began to show.
We could see the stone remains of Roman buildings ahead of us.
On the return run up the field, a large tractor pulled up on the main road so I went over to the driver to ask him if he needed to enter the field as our cars were in the gate opening (not much room to park).
He said yes, he was going to roll the field. I said that I thought it already been rolled as it was so flat!

We carried on as he rolled around us.
The ground was a detectorists heaven, you couldn't get it much flatter.
We were sure that the extra compression of the soil gave up more signals.
As you may know, small Roman coins only give a small signal and are usually never more than about 4 inches deep on arable land.

A Roman trumpet brooch, an unknown brooch and the top section of a Composite Plate brooch came up. A rare lead Roman tessera was an unusual find. These were used as tokens/tickets for admission to theatres, games, baths and even brothels. A nice Roman finger ring and a pair of tweezers were recovered.
One of the coins is a denarius of Julia Domna dated to AD 198 - 202 and the others were all C3rd to C4th copper alloy coins, one being an As of Vespasian AD 69 - 79 and the rest a mix of nummi from 'normal' sized coins (approx 18mm Ø) to tiny minims that were only 7mm Ø.

27 pottery fragments were collected with only one sherd positively identified as Medieval (c.1350 AD), the rest being Roman roof tile, rim sherds and a few pieces of possible tesserae.

HD images of all the finds can be seen here.