At this moment in time we have twelve new permissions to juggle around the sites we acquired in 2013.
We have been very fortunate indeed as these may produce some great archaeology as the research reveals that the sites have great potential.

Our heartfelt thanks goes to all the landowners involved from last year as they have been very accommodating and quite surprised at some of the history recovered from their land.
Fingers crossed that the new permissions are equally as good and I'm certain that we are going to be extremely busy recording for PAS between now and next April!
 
The latest permission took some sorting and the initial stages aren't over with yet! The agent for the landowners have just asked for my home address to send an "agreement" to me which all sounds very formal.
We didn't know it at the time but this land belongs to an Estate and we've no idea whatsoever how much land there is there!

It is going to be very interesting how we choose which sites to do over the others whilst in "stubble" as there will be a short window of opportunity before some of the land is re-ploughed.
One landowner I asked last year about surveying the "stubble" on one of his 60+ acre fields said "you're a bit late for that.... I've already ploughed, rolled and seeded that one"........ Dohhh!

Anyway..... the weather looks great for Adder hunting this Sunday :)
This may be the last chance I get to admire such a magnificent beast before next April.........
For those that are squeamish about snakes look away now lol!
Anyone who isn't fazed by images of the eighteen adders we came across please check this out...... Adder Heaven!

Paul King

Well, here we are still waiting for the crops to be harvested!
To try and alleviate the wait I've been out looking for Adders again.

Using the same research techniques used to track down good detecting sites have also been utilised in the quest to locate British Adders.

Today's outing resulted in the location of no less than eighteen Adders and a female Slow Worm! Fifteen of the Adders were female and the other two were males which for some reason are harder to locate after the mating season.

The Adders will have mated in late April into May and the young will be born sometime in late August or early September.
The females bask to bring on the young Adders that will be born as perfectly formed miniature versions of their parents. These tiny young have the same bite potential as the adults!

Pictures of the todays expedition can be seen here.

Paul King

There have been many posts and questions about how to achieve a half decent result when trying to capture our much loved artefacts on "film".

Tripping The Light Fantastic
The thing that is more important than any camera is the light source.
Once you have a consistent light source (and nice artefact) you are well on your way to successful artefact photography.

With flash photography I find that direct flash can be a little too severe and not as manoeuvrable. Bounce or diffused flash may be a little softer but the flash unit would have to be quite an advanced model.

The system I use to capture the images used for PAS recording and Flickr are 2 daylight lamps fixed to an adjustable tripod and boom. The bulb is centred in a dome and covered with a white diffuser. The diffuser eliminates most harsh shadows and allows you to "get in there" with the camera. All artefacts are photographed against a white background and close-ups are photographed on a sheet of frosted glass supported over a white sheet at a height of three inches or so.

The Fancy Bit Between Your Eye & Artefact
OK...so there are far more cameras available than light sources so this bit is easy......or is it?....

The camera you have must be able to photograph an image in "macro" so the camera has to have a macro mode setting . Macro is a photospeak term used for a camera set-up that's able to capture an image in extreme close-up. There should be a macro symbol that looks like a flower on the camera.

Now this is the very technical bit... the closer you are to the artefact the harder it may be to get all of your precious find in focus! The technical term for this is "Depth of Field" A.K.A. "DoF".

Coins present less of a challenge as they are flat and usually thin. Artefacts with more depth and detail such as a Roman fibula may be a little trickier. Parts of the fibula will be in focus and... annoyingly, some of it may be blurred or "soft"! 

On some compact cameras there should be an "A" (aperture) setting amongst the other letters on the dial such as "P" and "S". Yes, that does read PAS. 
By selecting "A" you can that alter the diaphram (a fancy bit inside the camera that acts like a human iris) to the largest number such as f8. This is known as "stopping down" in photographic circles.
Selecting f8 unfortunately cuts the light down (yes, that important bit at the beginning of this blog). This means that you'll have to be very careful as the shutter speed will probably be about 1/30th of a second instead of a faster 1/240th of a second! At 1/30th sec you will need a very steady hand ...or tripod. I shoot by hand as it allows me a little movement to tweak what is actually going to be 'on-screen' and you can check out that DoF too.

If your dial has both the "A" and the macro symbols you'll have to use the macro mode alone as the dial can only be in one place at once... and you may have to move further away from the artefact to ensure that all of it is in focus. Take as many photographs as you like so that when you upload them to your PC or laptop you can choose the best ones for editing later.

The Fun Bit
Now that you've beautifully photographed your carefully recovered artefact you may want to upload it to a photosharing website, or indeed, a forum.
Remembering that cameras are nowhere near as good as the human eye, your finished result may not look like you imagined it to be.

First of all, the image may be darker than you would like and secondly there may be too much of that white background/tabletop/settee in the shot.
This where a photo-editing tool comes into play. There are quite a few of these freely available on the net such as GIMP. There are other great software packages out there too.

If the image has too much background that detracts from the artefact you can easily crop it to your satisfaction. Also, if you need to lighten it up a bit, thats easy too. Just follow the instructions on either the software website or watch one of the myriad of YouTube videos that can show you the way.

Summary

• A stable and consistent light source
• A camera with a 'macro' mode or lens
• A photo editing software package
• A nice artefact

Hopefully I may be able to do a blog on how to create the perfect montage image for a Portable Antiquities Scheme record.

Paul King

We have had some constructive critisism on various aspects of our new website. In view of this we have made a few fundamental changes to reflect this. We are always open to new ideas and of course, your views.
It is these new ideas and attributes that have created 'The PAST' and we go from strength to strength acting on these.

One slight change is in the actual name we initially gave to our team.
Fortunately, we have several names in the bank but thought the one we chose was quite "catchy". Therefore is was quite an easy task to change our name to an even "catchier" name; 'Priscan Archaeological Survey Team'.

We launched the site ahead of the main field walking and detecting season knowing we won't have as much time to do the "tweaking" as we do have at least ten new permissions to visit. These will be actioned very shortly.
There will also be a blog on recent 'permission seeking' coming soon.

For those without Google.... 'Priscan' means dealing with or existing in ancient times and we think the 'scan' bit fits in very well in the grand scheme of things.

Paul King

Whilst waiting for the crops to come off I've gone back to my natural history roots and done a bit of adder hunting.
It's going to be August perhaps before any of the stubble fields are available!

Adders are quite scarce now and you only hear about them when someone, or their dog, has been bitten by one.
Adders will only bite when cornered or touched, they will usually carry on basking in the sun if you move slowly and gently past them.
They are more common in the south but here in the north they can be very ellusive. 

GPS (see previous article) was used to mark the sightings and revealed some remarkable info when overlaid onto Google earth. It showed that the adders were using a dry stone wall as some kind of reference point.
I'm sure that over time a bigger picture will evolve with more marks added to the database.

The pictures of the days "hunt" with some lovely shots of a large female adder can be seen here.

If anyone has any sightings of adders up'th north then please send details via the contact page. All information will be of the strictest of confidence.

Paul King

I know quite a few questions have been asked about the use of GPS in relation to detecting.

The unit I use is a *Garmin Etrec Vista C which is a model now seven years old.
The software that came with it (*MapSource) is pretty good and allows you to send waypoints either way - GPS unit to PC/Laptop and vice-versa.
This de-clutters all the waypoints on the unit allowing you to transfer just the waypoints for that days detecting.

A really useful feature is the ability to overlay your waypoints directly onto Google earth. This was used to good effect whilst hunting for Adders recently.

I only mark (waypoint) findspots as these are the critical points required. The tracking is only used on mountain bike rides to aid direction.
Crop marks are also marked with waypoints as when you are stood in the field itself, the field doesn't usually look like it did on Google earth!

The accuracy of my GPS unit is hovering around the 5 meter zone. Some newer models offer accuracy down to 2 - 3 meters using a mixture of the American GPS system and the later Russian equivalent; GLONASS.

Of course there are also GPS apps for smartphones if you have both smartphone and the data allowance to support it.

Whatever you use, it's certainly better than trying to remember a point on a Google earth image!

Paul King

* Other brands of GPS equipment and software are freely available.