Today's outing took us to two permissions, one recent and the other an old favourite.

The weather was fabulous if a little on the cool side, but with 45 acres of Winter Wheat to survey temperature wasn't going to be a problem.
What was a problem was the lack of any kind of finds! A few pieces of lead with the odd large ferrous signal was all that we could muster.
With no pottery either, things weren't looking too brilliant for this field even thought there was a large scheduled monument (a Roman settlement) in the next field!

The machines were set-up as usual except one was fitted with the 13" coil and the other two had the 9" HF coils attached.
GMP mode was engaged on all three machines at 18kHz, 14kHz and 24kHz and Tracking GB on one of the HF machines.

We decided to finish off at this permission and travel the short distance to the next one where we had only covered approximately 50% of the field.
Again, Winter Wheat was the crop here, but slightly more advanced than the previous field.

12 Roman coins were recovered, one of them being a lovely example of a denarius of Trajan dated AD 104 - 107. Two of the "grots" were in quite good condition
A worn C2nd Roman trumpet headed brooch was also found and was one that we hadn't come across before. This one has wings!

​High Definition images can be seen here.

Today was another leap into the unknown with a visit to a permission that we've never been to before.
The landowner commented that we should be okay to survey this 25-acre Winter Wheat field as the crop was quite short.

Sure enough, the crop was short and we had great visibility of the field surface.
We set off armed with the 9" coils (one standard and two HF) which were initially set at GMP with one at 14KHz, one at 18KHz and the other at 28KHz. One of the machines was switched between Manual GB at 82 and Tracking.

Within seconds we came across the first of 247 fragments of Medieval pottery dating between Anglo-Saxon and the Post Medieval periods.
The total weight of the pottery was 8.9Kg!
This consisted of many fragments of side vessel and base units but there were at least 46 jug handles and some of those were huge!

We had a map showing the Medieval settlement and one area showed a Saxon house, this is where the styca was recovered and fragments of Anglo-Saxon pottery.
The Medieval houses on the map revealed themselves in the form of hundreds and hundreds of ferrous signals. One of these ferrous items was a key and there were at least two huge door studs (like those you see on massive church doors) as well as several Medieval nails.
Déus Fast was called for and this was the program that winkled out the styca from all the ferrous targets surrounding it.
Some lovely Tudor pottery was also recovered which is always nice to see.

An interesting fact was that there were lots of animal bones lying around as well as several animal teeth.
These appeared to be cattle, sheep and pigs teeth with oyster shells and cockle shells to add to the diet.
We even managed to find a fossil oyster shell!

Some nice Medieval buckles surfaced (one being a cracking Saxon buckle) with strapends, mounts and other Medieval paraphernalia added to the mix.
Coinage was quite sparse with a farthing of Edward I, two Nuremberg jettons and a silver half-crown of Queen Anne (1707) turning up!
Oddly, there was a huge lead Medieval steelyard weight that may have been used to build the nearby Medieval church?

A beer bottle top from Hewitt's Brewery at Grimsby was amongst the 2,200g of rubbish/modern stuff we recovered. This was strange as we were on Southport beach (just kidding).
As you saw, we posted the image of the rubbish the other day. That included six horseshoes that were lying on the field surface.
Amongst the ferrous objects were a couple of those huge studs you find in church or hall doors, a key, a spear-headed shaped item (similar to the one on 'detectorist's) and some sort of mechanism.

A local chap stopped by and commented that is was "wrong" to be digging up the farmers crops. I approached him and assured him we had permission to dig there and that the landowner acknowledged that there was indeed crop in this field. He backed off a little then began to tell us about the local history regarding detectorist's.
He said that lots of detectorist's had searched the field beforehand and worryingly, he said they'd also searched the Scheduled Monument nearby!
We had already surmised that the field we were in had been saturated by previous detectorist's as there should have been far more metallic Medieval finds. The pottery to metallic finds ratio was well out of sync.
There is strong possibility that some of the pottery was rejected and ended up in pits.

We will probably give this field  miss in the future but at least we have a foot-in-the-door and will pursue other areas that look to be "interesting" as the farmhouse is over three miles from the field we surveyed.
Fingers crossed that the next fields we've researched may have something interesting in them.
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High Definition images of the finds can be seen here.

We are forever looking to improve on the model we have at Priscan Archaeology whether that be research, search techniques or presenting our finds.
Whilst producing satisfactory images for the website and other internet platforms, we thought that another step forward may enhance our enjoyment of what we do.

This step forward came from an initial suggestion from an archaeologist that specialises in high-tech archaeology. 
He asked if we'd ever tried photogrammetry? I couldn't even pronounce it never mind get my head around it!

Always up for a challenge, I thought that  this may be quite useful, if it could be mastered!
After a few attempts, success followed, but not to rest on any laurels, improvements could be made.

Equipment
​Apart from having an interesting subject to photograph, the rest is down to equipment and software.
The good news is that the software is free and extremely powerful.
Unfortunately, you need a fairly decent computer and graphics card.
Those who have a gaming PC or video editing PC should be okay to run the software to its capacity with ease.

Next up are the essential bits:
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• a camera with full manual control over the aperture, shutter and focus with a macro facility (several compact cameras have these features s well as the big boys).
• a tripod to cope with slow shutter speeds
• an even light source casting no shadows whatsoever
• a turntable to aid a smooth circular motion

There are several tutorials on how to achieve photogrammetry excellence.
Once you master the basic requirements, further experience will help hone your technique.

The software I use is called 3D Zephyr and the link to their tutorials can be seen here.

Examples of our first photogrammetry attempts can be seen here.

With a "Yellow" weather warning issued regarding snow and ice, it was touch and go whether or not that we would venture out today.
We've already missed quite a few weekends due to various reasons so we thought "risk it for a biscuit" and set off for our newest permission.

We could see several clouds in the distance dropping their goods on the landscape and wondered if we were going to escape the sleet and snow.
Panic over, it wasn't too bad, the soil and stubble were well drained and it looked as though it might brighten up.

And brighten up it did with some superb finds being recovered including a lovely detailed silver denarius of Julia Domna 196 AD, a stunning C2nd Roman trumpet fibula complete with its pin, two more fibulae fragments, a Roman ring, a bronze stater, thirteen Roman coins, two Roman mounts/sliders, a Medieval buckle frame,  a George III sixpence 1816, a Victorian shilling 1856 and more Roman and Medieval pottery.

Rob radioed t​o say he had company, it was the son-in-law of the landowner accompanied by his dog.
He asked if we'd found anything and in turn he was asked about the other detectorist. "What detectorist" he replied, "The one that comes regularly" Rob added, the son-in-law replied "I've never seen anyone and I walk the dog everyday!?". 
Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that our paths will cross in the near future which is a pity as we could have asked what was found and the outcome of those finds.

As last week, 1 x 9" standard coil, 2 x 9" HF coils, standard GMP mode but using 14khz, 18khz and 28khz.
Just a note on depth, the Roman trumpet fibula came up from a depth of 8" whilst some shotgun cartridges were coming up from depths of up to 9".

High Definition images can be seen here.