Jeeps! I can't believe it's May in two days' time!
The snow on leaving Preston got even worse as we headed towards the M62. Trucks were at a standstill and one 4x4 had skidded and flipped over!

We eventually arrived at JHF1 in glorious sunshine and to the sight of a barn owl hunting at 8:30am!! We also spotted a sparrowhawk with its breakfast tightly clutched in its talons.
We were met by the landowner who wondered who it was as he'd not seen the new vehicle yet. With that we were invited into the kitchen to discuss where we might be detecting. Two new fields were seeded and the game cover had been removed from three areas which might prove interesting.

The first area we decided to survey was indeed an area of game cover that had been flattened. This was right alongside a newly seeded winter wheat field where we had recovered several Roman coins in December last year.
It wasn't long before Roman coins started to appear with bits of lead, lots of tiny pieces of iron and two fragments of trumpet fibulae. One of the brooch fragments had an unusual piece attached to the head section and was recovered on the field surface.
An amusing bit was when a piece of flint (looking like lead) gave a good signal. Sure enough, the pro-pointer also confirmed that it was a good signal! I couldn't believe that this piece of flint was reading 71 on the Déus readout and was being picked up with the probe. The puzzle was solved with the discovery of a Roman coin "glued" to the rear of the flint blade!!
23 Roman coins later and it was time for lunch.

After lunch we checked out a newly seeded field but we didn't get any signals and there was no evidence of pottery, either Roman nor Medieval.
With that we decided to check out a field that was too wet last December.
On that visit we retrieved some lovely fragments of Medieval jug handles so the outlook was promising.
Within an hour we had recovered four hammered coins, three Edward I and a Lizzie sixpence dated 1574 AD. Another six hammered coins and a superb example of a vesica seal matrix were recovered. 
In total we had ten hammered coins and some great C14th pottery on this visit with at least another third of the field left to search. 

The choice of coil was the 13" x 11" elliptical and we used these all day paired with the standard GMP mode run in "Tracking".
​Most finds were within the usual 3" depth zone and many on the surface.

We called back at the farmhouse and asked about a field that is rough ploughed over a deserted Medieval village. This is planned to be seeded in late May. We also asked about the plans for the "hoard" field and he said he'd plough it much deeper than usual but would monitor it very closely and would stop the process if anything was spotted of significance.
He did add that if he was planting OSR instead of wheat again he'd just directly drill it!

​Images of the days' finds can be seen here.

After yesterday's outing in Cumbria it was a complete change of scenery with a trip down south to a permission that we've only been to twice before.
We arrived at AELWB slightly later than planned due to a few anomalies with the satnav in our brand new support vehicle.

We met with the farmer and handed over a report of what we'd discovered over the last two visits. He'd previously asked for a report and although he was expecting the document he was absolutely taken aback by it and commented on how professional it looked.
He then started to tick off fields on a map that I had printed out and he said you need a bigger map than that! With that he said that he'd get some Estate maps for me and post them on.

We had a quick look at the "new" fields he'd indicated..... some look to have interesting features.
However, we started off in the first field we'd planned to check out.
This was newly rolled field and had lots of C13th - C14th pottery but very little in the way of metallic finds which we found quite odd.
A chap came over to us and asked what we were doing and why we were interested in that particular field. He was local and wondered what history was there.
Low and behold a second chap came over to us and asked if we had permission there.
We had a good chat and found out that he too had permission to detect there. The farmer did say to us when we arrived the first time that a "local" guy had permission there. 
We came off the field and had a good chat as well as exchanging contact details.
He'd been detecting there since 2009 and now has full written permission and has found over 300 hammered coins there. He didn't mention any artefacts, although I'm sure there will be many.

He was going to detect a field nearby and we asked him to join us in another field that looked interesting and was worked down.
It was a little sticky with the 48 hours rain they'd had previously, but we persevered.
​A hammered and a spindle whorl were some of the finds of note.

Rob and I moved to the next field which was in winter wheat and we could see that it had been directly seeded over wheat stubble without ploughing.
Four hammered coins, a lovely seal matrix, a fragment of a pilgrims ampulla and several strapends came to light. Some really nice pieces of Medieval pottery also came up.

We finished up and headed out for tea/supper and ended up at a really nice Indian with a menu with a twist. Very nice indeed!
We landed back in Lancashire at 11:35pm!!!!

Images of the days finds can be seen here.

A clear and frosty start to the day, with two permissions being checked out today. The first permission (MFS) is where we came across the sarcophagus that was overgrown and then had to leave due the arrival of the fertiliser spraying machine.

On the way to todays sites we saw plenty of deer and a whiley fox on the hard shoulder of the M60 sniffing around the verge. No barn owls were seen at all!

Several lead items in the form of English Civil War musket balls, a decorated spindle whorl, a weight and a Medieval stylus emerged.
Iron Age, Roman and Medieval artefacts were recovered with a grot, part of a fibula, a woad grinder, an IA fitting, a sword hanger, Medieval buckles and pottery were amonst all the recoveries.
Lots of knapped flint were also evident.
A lovely Georgian intaglio made from amber onyx with a silver surround came to light. A polished piece of amber onyx that matched perfectly in colour was collected from the field surface.

We dropped in to see the landowner for an update and she suggested calling a friend of hers that has a farm a few miles away.
Research shows that there is evidence of Romano-British habiation there.

We cleaned up the sarcophagus and photographed it the best we could. The results are on our flickr site.

The next site was TS1 which is predominantly Romano-British.
We called in at the farmhouse and we were told that the landowner was actually ploughing the rest of the field we were in last week.
Sure enough, he was just about to finish the headlands as we arrived. A quick chat and we were away.
​As you can see below the ploughed bit was quite rough!

The neckover was essential as it was soooooo cold! 
A few sherds of Roman pottery, including one piece of Samian Ware and 6 Roman coins, three of them quite clear, were recovered.
Three fibulae fragments were the only other recoveries during the three hour survey.

Compared to the previous visits, the drop in recoveries is definite proof that a field can be "done to death". This has now occured at two sites we have. It just shows that with a structured search pattern this will eventually empty the field of finds. That is why we have commisioned a three year plan to acquire sites that will mirror the effort that we have applied to the process and to realise the ambitions that others aspire to.
We are aware that before long all the "great" sites we have will end up being a "mediocre" sites due to the pressure we apply to them.
The only other option would be to archaelologcally excavate them to reveal further evidence there.

The images for MSF can be seen here.

​The images for TS1 can be seen here.

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On the way to a site (MFS) that we'd not been to since October 2014 we didn't see a lucky barn owl but we did see some deer.
Whilst enroute we passed three other permissions, two had been drilled but the third was still roughly ploughed.
A landowner from a another permission passed by and turned around to see who we were. We had a chat with him for 15 minutes or so catching up on things.
We arrived at  MFS to find it drilled with spring barley. We geared up to the sound of our very first chiffchaff of the year!
​
The first signal was a lovely early Victorian penny. The second signal was a fragment of a Roman Thealby type fibula. Lots of lead in various forms and C17th musket balls from the English Civil War were also recovered.
A gold "T" bar from a pocket watch, Medieval buckles, pottery, flint and a voided long cross cut-quarter emerged.

We heard a deep rumbling in the distance and when we looked around a spraying machine had turned up and started spraying the crop in the next field. I said to Rob that it would be in this field next and very soon!!!
Sure enough it arrived in our field and started spraying. With that, we rang another landowner (who's sprayer was on this permission) and asked if we could visit his land. He said yes so we packed up and visited the landowner to say thanks. She invited us in and made a pot of tea and we stayed there chatting for an hour! I said we'd missed a lot of surveys due to the weather and were going to miss more as I'm off to Lake Garda shortly then Madrid a week later. She said her favourite place was Lake Garda and that she had friends there that owned a restaurant. She promptly showed us a painting of the castle at Sirmione on Lake Garda. The same spit of land also has the largest Roman Villa in northern Italy!
We were also amazed at the number of landowners she knew and said that we'd probably would find interesting things there. She quantified this by saying that when they built a bungalow on the land "loads" of artefacts were found!
As we were leaving, she added that we might want to look at her concrete "coffin" tucked away behind a hedgerow.
JEEPS!! It WAS a coffin! A picture of it is below.

We made our way to TS1 which is predominantly a Roman site. We were last here a year ago and seeing that it was now 4:30pm we thought we'd make the most of the nice weather.
The site is heavily contaminated with ferrous particles caused by the thousands of Roman nails that have accumulated over the 400 years of occupancy. This was of no consequence to the machines we were using as the Déus just cuts through all that debris easily.
One find of note was a piece of red coral which is an extremely rare to find as it is so soft. This is the second fragment of red coral to be recovered from this site! 

Another find that you don't see here was a large piece of "pink" granite that was probably used as a pestle for grinding everything from the red coral above to  herbs, seeds and paste mixtures. A mortar was recovered at this site a couple of years ago.

Eight Roman coins, a Roman coil type finger ring and flint were also recovered in the short time here.

Images from the first site MFS can be seen here and images from the second site TS1 can be seen here.