On Friday 17th December 2021 we asked one of our landowners if we could revisit a field we last surveyed 22nd August 2019.
The answer was yes so we planned our visit for Sunday 19th December 2021.

We recovered 69 Roman coins and over 4 kilo's of Roman pottery including tegulae and a piece of imbrex.
Thoughts are that there are at least 2 Roman buildings there.

After the Christmas and New Year celebrations (very low-key) and a spell of dry-ish weather, we made a visit to the number 2 field we had targetted.
On arrival (Sunday 16th January 2022) we were confronted with a field full of knee-length crop.
Our hearts sank a little, well a lot really so we thought we could see if we could rescue the situation somehow.
We managed to find a few areas where the crop hadn't grown too well so the opportunity to have a small reccy was taken.
The plan was to spend about an hour or so in this field then head over to the field where we had recovered the Roman coins and pottery in December.

I got a call on the radio from Robin that he had found something interesting so I walked over to have a look at this "interesting" find.
It was a piece of gold jewellry and I instantly thought that it looked Anglo-Saxon with a zoomorphic feature.
After taking a picture and uploading to a social media site it was confirmed that it was indeed Anglo-Saxon and was in fact an Aestel.
These were used to point out caligraphy in ancient manuscipts and this piece is dated to c. AD 850 - AD 999 so used during the reign of King Alfred.
Apparently, it was Alfred that had these commissioned and sent out with some of the newly translated religious texts from Latin to Anglo-Saxon.
The only other find of note was a Roman trumpet brooch which still had most of its pin intact.

With the searchable patches covered, we returned to field number 1 where more Roman coinage was unearthed..... and more pottery.

We were contacted by one of our landowners and asked if we could locate an earring lost during a shoot on their land.
The earrings were specially commissioned in Hanoi for a high-ranking official visiting there.

Robin (one of our team) very kindly volunteered to visit the farm and search for the item of jewellry of which the owner was quite upset about the loss.

On arrival at the farm, the landowner drove him to the shooting area and dropped him off there.
Within 5 minutes of setting up the machine, Robin successfully located the earring but the rear clasp was still missing.
​
The landowner was called and the good news passed on.

We heard in the second half of 2021 that XP were going to launch a brand new version of the original iconic XP Déus in December 2021.
The launch was delayed to January 7th 2022 with most suppliers operating a first-come, first-served basis.
This led to a chaotic attempt for people to try and acquire a Déus II.
​
One retailer announced before the launch that the only way to purchase a machine was online only as the shop was shut and not taking 'phone orders. Unfortunately, those that stuck to those rules missed out but those that didn't could order over the telephone.

The majority of the machines appear to have gone to YouTube influencers rather than experienced detectorists.
This is supported by the lack of the expected avalanche of finds that were expected, whether imaginary or factual.
There are far more images of Déus II boxes and machines than there are of the anticipated finds.
​
Looking at the forums, nothing has changed at all!

A couple of the team have decided to perhaps purchase a Déus II, not because it is percieved to find more, it's simply more robust and there may be an advantage with it being a multi-frequency machine.
There's no rush to buy a Déus II as the Déus One has proved to be the best machine to date for us.

​Just as a reminder, this is what we've found with the Déus One.... Enjoy!