A beautiful start to the day with wall-to-wall blue sky.
After a drive through the farm and the mile or so along the field edges we eventually arrived at our survey field.
The landowner arrived as we were "kitting up" and pointed out that there were three areas that he was going to have rolled and seeded over the next couple of weeks. He'd also just deep-ploughed a large field and planted potatoes there, that may be an interesting project for next year.

The machines were set up as last week with the 13" x 11" coils using the GMP mode in standard and GB using the "Tracking" mode. The "Tracking" was a little unstable for one of the team so manual was selected and set at "76" whilst keeping an eye on the "suggested" levels.

The first area of land we looked at was freshly cultivated so the soil was quite soft and aerated. This wasn't too much of a problem as a cut-half of Henry III was recovered as well as the head of a Roman headstud fibula which was a surface find.
Adjacent to this area was the second part of the survey area which was seeded with spring barley and very short in growth height.
A lovely complete gold guilded C13th brooch was one of the recoveries in this particular part of the survey field.
The finds were very difficult to pin down with no pottery evident, however, some nicely worked flint pieces were recovered from the field surface.
We decided that with the remaining few hours we had should be spent on an area we'd driven past on the way in that was now rolled and seeded.

This area has already had a quick scan a few weeks ago whilst it was cultivated but was too rough to survey effectively. Now we were looking at a lovely smooth carpet of green with the spring barley here just about showing through.
The first pass unearthed a medieval dress hook and a mix of Roman and medieval pottery. The next pass was quite extraordinary, one of the team said that it would be nice to end the day with a nice denarius and literally one step further a nice denarius of Septimius Severus was recovered. We all laughed at the timing of this and the next comment was ..."and a lovely Roman brooch would be nice too!". Sure enough, a superb silvered C2nd trumpet fibula complete with its pin was unearthed one hundred and sixty-seconds later! 

A cut-quarter of Henry III was found followed by a half groat of Charles I.
The cut-quarter was another "life time first" for one of the team!
We knew that the day would be challenging and the results were as expected.

The next visit should see the team looking at the three areas that the landowner is seeding later with the possibility that a further visit may be needed to complete the task.

Images of the days' recoveries can be seen here.

A pre-journey team breakfast snack of warm mini-doughnuts was the start to a very good day indeed. The weather was perfect with no wind and a bright sky.

The survey area was planted with spring barley and had a growth height of three inches which was ideal for fieldwalking providing us with superb surface visibilty. This was to prove invaluable during the day.

All three machines were fitted with the 13" x 11" coils and running on the standard GMP mode with "Tracking" automatically adjusting the ground balancing properties.

The first pass, which started in the contaminated area where we were parked, took us down the longest length of the field and produced modern lead and a nice conditioned 1882 Victorian penny.
The second pass heading back towards the support vehicle was even quieter with no good signals and no surface finds. It was at the very end of this run that our fortunes were about to change. A signal was located just below the surface, at five millimeters, in the highly contaminated zone next to the parking area. The rusty coloured disc was the first coin to be recovered with the new Garrett AT Pro-Pointer! On cleaning, it began to show that it was an Anglo-Saxon coin of Aethelred II (The Unready) dating to c.997 AD

A nice lead document seal dating to the mid C17th was recovered along with spindle whorls, an Elizabethan sixpence and a Phillip & Mary groat, along with various pieces of flint.
A polished spherical stone was found and was probably used as canon fodder by the Royalist forces camped there.

However, the most suprising finds were recovered from the field surface in the form of eight large fragments of Iron Age quern stones! We thought it was amazing when the second one was found but as the number recovered rose, our amazement turned into pure astonishment. The total for the quern stones recovered for the area is now ten!

After all the excitement of the quern stones and the Anglo-Saxon penny it was decided that we would have an hour on another permission. This was the one where we had to abandon the survey due to the inclement weather last week. The time spent should be enough to end two surveys in one go!
The first signal on this section was the surface find of the gold plated stater of the Corieltauvi tribe. More musket balls were recovered as well as a lovely Elizabethan sixpence in great condition, our second Elizabethan sixpence of the day!

The images of all the recoveries can be seen here.

An early start saw us arriving on-site at 7am. This was necessary due to the warning that inclement weather was on its way and would arrive in the afternoon.

We'd already had a slight hiccup in that one of the team had left behind his finds pouch..... but worse still.... his Pro-Pointer was attached to it!!!
Worse was still to come, one of the remaining two probes had decided to play dead, right at the very start of the survey! Even a battery change couldn't alter the fact that we were down to one probe between the three of us.

We didn't let that dampen our enthusiasm so we carried on from where we left off on the 28th March. On that visit, we recovered several artefacts and hammered coinaige that reflect a high probability of this being an English Civil War encampment. The coins dated from Elizabeth I to Charles I. 

All three machines were set up identically; 13" x 11" coils, GMP standard, Tracking. The only alteration was using the frequency shift so that all three were operating at a slightly diferent frequency in the 18khz band.

Low and behold, on the first pass of the area, the first coin was a Roman coin, a follis of Constantine The Great at three inches. On the second pass, the next coin was a hammered coin of Elizabeth I, again three inches in depth. Another fifteen feet further along the transect a bronze core, gold plated stater was recovered at three inches. At the beginning of the third pass a half groat of Elizabeth I, 1562 AD was recovered form a depth of one inch. Three to four inches was the main depth for the smaller coins except for the James VI Scottish Merk (thirteen shillings and four pence) that came from a depth of six inches. The larger items came from depths of up to twelve inches.

Sure enough, as predicted, the weather closed in and by the time we'd changed back into our "civvies" it was extremely damp!
We called in at the landowners house and luckily enough he was in. He was surprised to learn of our suspicions of the Civil War camp and was even more suprised at the Celtic and Roman items recovered.
He said there was no problem coming back to complete the field whenever we we liked. The problem we have is that a field nearby, on another landholding, has Spring barley planted there and is now showing! 
We'll have to assess the growth when we arrive there this coming weekend.

The images for the finds recovered on the day can be seen here.

Todays survey saw us revisiting the field we call Toy Soldier One (TS1). Apart from the recent two hour visit on 22nd March, it was 29th October 2013 when we last surveyed here. The reason for the 17 month gap was simply down to crop conditions.

The weather conditions weren't the best, with a grey, drizzly and misty start to the day. On arrival, the conditions were exactly the same. 
We elected to go for full waterproofs just in case it worsened.
It actually improved after 10am!

The machines were attached to the 13" x 11" coils and set up as follows:
Déus #1; GMP, 18 & 12 khz, GB Tracking then manual 75
Déus #2; GMP, 18 khz, GB Tracking
Déus #3; GMP & Fast, 18 khz, GB Tracking

The field was in a rolled state with high ridges running down the full length of the rolled area. The ridges made it difficult at times to action a full two width scan resulting in perhaps 10% of the field being missed.

An hour into the survey a vehicle pulled up at the field edge and a chap came over to us and asked who we were. I thought it was another landowner but it turned out that it was another detectorist!!! It was agreed that he would start at the opposite side of the field and work towards us.
This was quite important as we had an archaeologist joining us at some point and wanted the area scanned to our specifications.

Unbelievably, it took one of the team two and a half hours to find his first Roman artefact/coin! Meanwhile, the other two PAST members were recovering small Roman coins and even a Roman trumpet fibula.

The archaeologist arrived onsite and asked how we were doing. After the introductions she carried on with her fieldwalking and we did the same.
Every so often she would meet up with us and was amazed at the amount of pottery, flint and metallic finds we were recovereing.

She said that a friend of hers was flying over and taking pictures of the area as there were some "interesting" earthworks nearby. Sure enough, a Cessna buzzed the area for a while, I just hope my hair was tidy!
Later on in the day she had to leave and very kindly invited us back to her home for tea and cake. I did warn her that it would be later than 7pm when we would finish. In fact it was 7:50pm when we actually decided to call it a day.
This was one of the longst surveys we'd carried out in a long while, lasting 13 hours. However, the recoveries reflect the rewards of such a marathon event. It was imperative that we should finish this area today as we are now running short on time for the remaining seeded areas at other permissions.

Several pieces of Roman-British and Iron Age pottery including Samian Ware were recoverd along with various Roman artefacts, 66 Roman coins including 4 denarii as well as a Celtic Silver Unit of the Corieltauvi tribe. Even an obligatory hammered coin managed to make an appearance. One of the Roman bronze units was, remarkably, the same colour as when minted, a lovely golden bronze colour!
Three spindle whorls were recovered with one looking to be early medieval.
An interesting piece of bronze slag still had a bronze artefact still intact within the molten mass. A nice C2nd trumpet fibula and a fragment of an Iron Age Dragonesque fibula were the only brooch artefacts to surface. A chunky Roman finger ring added to the RB artefact recoveries.
One of the flint pieces we found may be a barbed and tanged neolithic spearhead!

A quick change into our "civvies", then it was off for tea and cake at the home of the lovely lady archaeologist we'd met.
After negotiating all the animals and the over zealous sheepdog (badger) we made our way into the farmhouse kitchen. 
With the kettle on the hob we revealed the finds for the day... she and her son were amazed at the amount we'd recovered.
Hopefully, this may stand us in good stead as she has a lot of contacts, both in the farming community and the archeaological world.

The next task was to investigate the problem she was having downloading images from our Flickr site. We found ourselves in the study and a 24" monitor loaded with an email I'd sent previously with the links to Flickr.
One of the links in the email was the home page of our Flickr account showing all the surveys on one page. Again, they were both amazed and mesmerised at the images on screen. After drilling down to the level she required, it was a fairly straight forward process showing her the easiest way of downloading the images.

After a fantastic day and a superb finalé we bid our farewells and headed back to Lancashire.

Images of all the recoveries for the day can be seen here.

As mentioned in our previous post, we did have our work cut out surveying three areas of the permission codenamed "GE". Although a new permission, the landowner has stated that the land has been searched several times before by various detectorists. 

The machines had the 13" x 11" coils attached and set up as follows:
#1, #2 & #3; Déus GMP with a switch to "Fast" when appropriate.

First up was a roughly ploughed field that had a perimiter of level-ish part-rolled ground. Thirty minutes on this patch shows that the area may have been saturated by the other detectorists. To their credit, virtually no metallic items were recovered. However, four pieces of medieval and one Romano-British pottery sherd was recovered.
The second area was a large field with winter wheat growing in one half and the other half was rolled and flat as a pancake. 
Again, not many metallic items were recovered with only three Roman grots surfacing and only two pieces of pottery on the surface, one Roman the other C14th.
The rain came in, just as we thought about visiting the third area of interest.
This field is rolled and seeded with the surface showing no sign of any plant growth. The only items recovered here were Georgian.

After a "team" meeting it was decided to vist two permissions a short drive away to ascertain if they had been rolled as of yet. 
We got there to find that the two fields we have been eagerly waiting to survey had both been rolled and seeded! We couldn't wait to scan the field we call the "Civil War" field. The adjacent field was beckoning too as we assume that there may be a small market site there as well as Roman connections. We chose to go for the "Civil War" field.

We last surveyed this field when it was in stubble last November. We actioned a "wide area" scope so as to cover the entire 20+ acre field in one day! This produced strong evidence of a Civil War encampment with a number of hammered coins being recovered as well as artefacts from that era. A Roman dupondius was also recovered at that time.

On todays visit we found 5 hammered coins (Elizabeth I to Charles I), a Rose farthing, 3 Roman grots, 2 lead palm-guards, musket balls, buckles,  3 clay pipe bowls as well as three worked flints, a lovely fragment of an Iron Age quern stone as well as a mixture of pottery.

In all, we only covered less than a quarter of the field so we will be going back there at some point in the near future to complete the survey.

Images of all todays recoveries can be seen HERE.