Another great day for a land survey with clear blue skies and plenty of sunshine. The breeze kept the temperature down to a pleasant 21C.

The survey field is 4 acres in size and has OSR stubble that has been flattened in most places.
We last visited this field in September 2013 with some spectacular results.
However, on this occasion we struggled to recover the artefacts that were there. Our conclusion was that the field had only been cultivated and never ploughed since our last visit. The cultivating had disturbed some items in the form of two cut-half pennies, a ring, medieval buckles and a lovely zoomorphic casket foot amongst the recoveries.

We decided that we would cut short the survey and keep our promise to call in at a brand new permission nearby to say hello.
We could see that there was a lot a combine activity in progress on several fields in the area.
We arrived at the farmhouse to be greeted by two very friendly guard dogs.
The landowners wife came out to meet us and after the introductions she said that she'll email us as soon as the field is harvested.

Meanwhile, an email came through on the 'phone to say that another new landowner had left a message to call him with regards to surveying land he owns that has  deserted medieval village on it.

All in all it was a pretty good day with plenty to look forward to.

Images of today's recoveries can be seen HERE.

Another good start to the day weatherwise.
We arrived on site at 8am to be faced with a field that was 1.26 miles in length! This is another new permission along with the one we visited last Saturday. The field measures c.176 acres and is cultivated OSR.

We had previously GPS'd a couple of locations so as to highlight the areas we had researched to make it a little easier surveying such a vast field.
The research came back as a first century RB site that was vacated soon after it was established. The area was fieldwalked in the 1950's by a group of local archaeologists along with experts experienced in RB history.

Our survey concluded that the 1950's fieldwalk was indeed accurate as we only recovered one dupondius and six pieces of pottery, greyware and one piece of samian. There was very little in the way of metallic evidence such as nails, coinage and other artefacts.

One point that we should mention here is about the "depth" that our machines could achieve when necessary.
Last week a target was located by one of the Déus' and indicated that it was deep. The Déus showed that the object could be ferrous but we decided to check it out. The item was indeed ferrous in the shape of a cast iron Victorian cooking pot at 26 inches in depth!
We again located a deep target on this 176 acre site and this time it was even deeper..... a ferrous plate at 32 inches. 
These depths were measured so as to be accurate.

We decided that we would call in and see the landowner as we hadn't met him yet!
We got to the farmhouse and were confronted with an electric gate so we jumped out and walked the rest of the way.
On arrival we were met by the landowners wife and got along fine and chatted about what we had found, or not found as in this case. We asked if we could survey other fields if the research dictated so, she said of course.

We elected to ring our other new landowner and asked about two possible sites that we could carry out a selective survey. He said no problem, they were both in stubble. 

The first field was near to a RB settlement but there was a lot of wheat chaff on the ground so we only had about a 20% view of the field surface. This would make it very difficult in recovering any surface pottery.
No ferrous or non-ferrous items were detected so after the time allotted we drove to the second area of interest.

The second area was adjacent to a moated site so the rest of the day was going to be spent surveying around the periphery of the moat.
Again, there were very little in the way of ferrous and non-ferrous signals, however, we did recovery a piece of C13th pottery and a groat of Edward III as well as a small strapend buckle.

We are looking forward to next weekend as we may have a chance of surveying ETF, a site we havn't been to since 2013 due to crop conditions.

Images of the recovered coins and artefacts can be see here and here.

A beautiful start to the day and new season with scattered clouds and lots of sunshine.
This is a brand new permission that we have researched and we were looking at the possibility of an Iron Age settlement.
The ground was cultivated and the soil was very sandy indeed.
The initial signs didn't bode well though as there were very few ferrous signals and even less lead to be found and no IA/RB pottery whatsoever!
The only conclusion we could come to was that the site was early IA or even late BA.

However, all was not lost, the first run down the field edge produced evidence of medieval activity. A small fragment of pottery and two hammered coins were recovered. In all, four hammered coins, a beautiful enamelled heraldic pendant, a Norman swivel mount and other medieval artefacts supported the view that there was medieval ridge and furrow over the top of a much earlier settlement.

The landowner arrived a couple of hours into the survey. We introduced ourselves as we'd never met up until that point. He was enthusiastic about what we were doing and mentioned that a local detectorist had found "things" in other fields. He commented on the fact that the local guy had never asked to search this particular 55 acre field.
We only had access to one half as the other half had a potato crop in it.
He said we could come back and re-survey when it was re-seeded and that we could do the potato half when it was up and levelled.
I took the opportunity to show him the Flickr site we have and the PAST recoveries that featured on there. He was suitably impressed.

After 2pm the heat was too intense and the finds had evaporated so we decided to call it a day.
We were in the vicinity of another new permission we acquired at the same time as the above location so we elected to call in to show our faces.
He was out combining so was a tad busy. We spoke to someone that appeared to be in charge there and asked him to mention that we had called in and would visit the new site next weekend.
This site is totally different to the one above as we think there is a Romano-British settlement there, perhaps a villa? Unfortunately, the field is one and a quarter miles in length!

We left to make the short journey home (sic) and got into a tight squeeze with another 4x4 coming in the opposite direction.
As we passed very slowly it appeared as though the driver was going to say something. We both stopped at the same time and reversed until we we alongside each other.
He wound the window down and asked us for directions to another farm that were combining at the time. We didn't know where this was and apologised saying we weren't from around there. He laughed and said "I thought not with those accents". He asked what we were doing as we all our PAST polo shirts on, so we told him. He was gobsmacked as he thought we were MARQUEE erectors!!! We all laughed and then he dropped a bombshell. He said that his cousin had a farm and would ask him if we could survey there! He took our details and said he would be in touch. After that, we unblocked the road and bid our farewells.

We managed a luxury tea at Burger King and reflected on the day we had.
It was certainly a day of ups and downs!

Looking forward to our next outing next weekend.