After a very misty journey the day brightened up to become quite warm, a balmy 23C!

We'd visited this field 2 weeks ago and covered 3-acres which produced the expected Medieval coinage and pottery that we'd recovered in past visits.
We were quite excited about searching this field again as it had been ploughed since our last full visit about a year previously.

We had a further 5-acres to survey and we thought that this could be achieved according to the formula we use to estimate field coverage.

Now for the boring technical bit.
Three different coils were used; a 9" HF, a 13" standard coil and the 13" X35 using standard settings.
There appeared to be a problem with the X35 coil as it was difficult to keep it stable and there was a moment in time where a change to the 9" HF coil was contemplated.
A drop in sensitivity from 90 to 78 seemed to calm things down but some small finds may have been missed during the first hour or so trying to get used to the amount of noise coming from the headphones. In hindsight I now realise that "good" signals will have been missed. As an example, the X35 coil only detected 16% of the total hammered coin finds using our usual strict search technique, even after changing the sensitivity back to the factory setting of 90.

Anyway, back to more 'exciting' things such as finding the 16 hammered coins, 1 siliqua of Valentinian II, a Medieval buckle that may have had it's origins in France and lots of C13th to C14th pottery.
If the siliqua is Valentinian II, there's quite an interesting story behind him.

One of the coins was attributed to 'John the Blind' kindly identified by Allectus on the MDF forum.
A lovely Medieval ring came up as well as a couple of worked flints.
I'm sure there'll be a challenge trying to ID the coins recovered!

HD images of all the finds can be seen here.

This is only the 13th trip out since last August!
We decided to finish off a field we looked at a couple of weeks ago.
The field was drilled with oats and another crop to help replenish the soil structure.
Although some great finds have come from this field, we weren't hoping for too much from the northern section compared to the southern half.

Sure enough, it was hard going with virtually no pottery and only a few good signals. There were however lots of green waste signals which made it even harder work along with the warm sun, tempered with a cooling easterly breeze
​The first coin was a bent hammered short-cross penny followed by a denarius of Hadrian a dated to AD 134 - 138 and then a Saxon brooch fragment that may date to the C6th. An Iron Age toggle fastener and a couple of lead spindle whorls were also recovered.
​A surprise find was a 5-day old fawn!

Our second field is one where a local detectorist has spent hundreds of hours detecting there.
This field has almost certainly been a market site due to the many hammered coins that the local chap had found.
Our first-ever survey there resulted in 22 hammered coins and lots of Medieval pottery.
The conditions were perfect with only a small amount of what looked to be grass showing.

The latest 2-hour visit produced 5 hammered coins, a Saxon brooch fragment, a denarius of Antoninus Pius under Marcus Aurelius dated to AD 162 and some Medieval pottery. One of the pieces of pottery had finger impressions that were quite small. Perhaps a female or indeed, a child perhaps?
​The plough had certainly stirred things up as a clack valve was found. This shows that something that size can be missed!

Both 13" coils and 9" coils were used with standard settings except for the 9" coil using a mixture of 14kHz and 31kHz frequencies.
Again, most finds were located within the first 5 inches of the field surface.

High Definition images of the finds can be seen here.