Today saw a revisit to a permission we acquired last year.
The day started off well with beautiful weather and a superb drive in our new team vehicle. The VW Amarok came fully loaded with heated leather seats for those cooler winter days as well as AC for those warmer days like we had today.

Unfortunately Steve couldn't make this trip so it was down to Rob and I to carry the flag for the team.
We don't know what the sat nav was playing at but it managed to take us through every medieval village between home base and our destination!

We arrived at the field nice and early as the morning mist was begining to lift. Buzzards were mewing and the red kites were very vocal too.
We checked out a field we surveyed earlier this year that has an early RB settlement and that was re-seeded with OSR. The field next to it that also has an IA settlement was rolled and seeded with wheat. Hopefully we'll be able to survey those next week.

Our new field was rolled and seeded with wheat, the past crop was OSR.

This field is an unknown quantity as we've never surveyed it before.

The Déus' were fitted with their large coils and set to GMP mode using the standard settings with GB in "Tracking".
The temperature was too warm within 30 minutes of arrival so it was off with the jumpers and down to T shirt detecting.

As expected we had lots of small ferrous background noise along the road edge. Moving away from the road resulted in a much quieter and pleasant background ambience.

The first run had several Georgian coins unearthed with the second run producing our first and only hammered of the day, a Lizzie three pence dated 1566.
More Georgian coinage appeared with several lead weights of varying descriptions.

We broke for lunch and then the landowner arrived on his quad and asked how we were doing. I asked if it was ok to survey the other fields that we'd looked at earlier for next week? "No problem" he informed us.

After plenty of fluid and lunch we carried on from where we left off.

An assorment of artefacts were recovered with a couple of lead discs, one with a commemeration medal of Queen Victoria and the other looked like a lead seal of some sort. A grotty Roman coin even put in a show!
There was hardly any pottery except for one piece dating to AD1650.
A lovely pimple button surfaced but the highlight of the day was the superb medieval seal ring!

All the images of the days recoveries can be seen here.

Well.... we were out a day earlier than normal and the weather looked better for Sunday would you believe!!!
Anyway, we got there and met the tenant farmer and his wife.
The weather, as it turned out, was quite good being overcast but warm.
We had Google images of the land we thought they farmed and the farmer said he would take us to the field we were initially interested in.

Twenty-one acres of very soft stubble greeted us.
After fussing over his two very over excited dogs, patiently waiting in the back of the Land Rover, we set off on a mission.

The Déus' were set up as usual with the their large coils attached except for Steve with his new small SEF coil.

This field was also low on all signals whether ferrous or otherwise.
Oddly enough, the second worked flint came from the area next to the disk rolling machine in the foreground of the picture above.
At the very top of the field however there was quite a large area that had a mass of ferrous and high tone aluminium signals. Seemed as though it may be the site of a airplane crash as a few planes had come to grief in the area.
Well..... would you believe it..... we actually moved from what was probably the smoothest, flattest field ever to go to a pasture field that the farmers wife spoke about.

The pasture field was actually several fields together but one in particular looked promising. It was called "Town End" and had an old footpath running through it that wasn't on the maps anymore.
It was this field that produced most of the days artefacts with a lovely decorated spindle whorl and a few other medieval treats too.
The downside was that it was the hardest pasture I've ever tried to put a spade into! It was so dry and hard-packed, we couldn't believe it. We had to cut this visit short too and vowed to come back when it had seen a lot of rain!!!

The link to the days photos can be clicked here.

Today was the first day on a new permission in a new county!

As can be seen in the image below..... the field conditions were as flat as you could get, well almost.
The downside was that the soil was very dry and full of air.
Field One (17 acres) was the first to be surveyed using the harrow lines as a guide with a distance of 15ft spacing between us.
The machines were set up as usual (GMP, auto and manual GB, 18khz) using large coils for greater coverage.
Steve elected to use his brand new small SEF coil.

The soil, as mentioned, was very dry and powdery and most artefacts were in the 0 - 5" depth range.
There was a high level of Victorian night soil at the southern end of the field.
The initial survey indicated that there was no evidence of early habitation with just one Roman grot and no pre C17th pottery at all.

A quick call to the landowner at lunch-time confirmed that another field a short distance away was his and that we could have a look there "if we liked".

Sandwiches hastily eaten, .....we were off to field number Two.

The field (11 acres) was in exactly the same condition as field number One.
Even the Victorian night soil was evident at the southern edge of this field too. 
However, there appeared to be more signals than field One and it also had a public footpath running through the middle of it!
We used the footpath as a marker and surveyed up to it and then turned 180 degrees and carried on in the opposite direction.
I'm not too sure that this was a good decision using the footpath as a marker as every time we got to the footpath there were very curious members of the general public asking all sorts of questions. As this was a very affluent area their questions were very articulate. All of the peolple we spoke to were astounded on three counts; a) the amount of finds we had recovered, b) how knowledgable we were about their local history and of history in general and c) the fact that we recorded for The British Museum! They were well impressed.
The exchange of their local knowledge, especially regarding other landowners in the area was invaluable. A key bit of info was a landowner who has a Roman villa on his land and isn't scheduled..... yet.

A good range of artefacts were recovered, from flint to Victorian coins and pottery. No Roman or medieval pottery came to light. 

Next Saturday we are off to another brand new permission, but this could be the tip of the iceberg as it's part of a 8000+ acres Estate.

The images of the recovered artefacts can be seen here.

Site No 1
We set off for a brand new medieval permission that had been harvested recently. The weather looked good as there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Sure enough we got there and the weather was still good... but...... this sight of our new site greeted us.....

Jeeps!!!!! It was deep ploughed except for the bit around the edge!!!
The other fields were in the same condition!

The two Déus' were set up with small coils and GMP mode as standard.
GB was 'tracking' for Rob and 85 for me.
The Gold Maxx Power had it's brand new tiny NEL Sharpshooter coil attached and set up for however Steve uses it. All finds were at a maximum of 5 inches at the deepest.
Rob and Steve decided to wobble around on the ploughed area where as I decided to whimp out and do the edges.
Steve and Rob found worked flints, large Civil War musket balls and a cracking early decorated medieval spindle whorl.
The edge of the field had more Civil War musket balls and a surface find of a hammered coin of Charles 1st which was broken into three pieces which would have been in a nice condition if it was intact.

At least we knew that this permission may produce some amazing medieval artefacts once it has been rolled and seeded.
After an hour we decided that we couldn't survey any further.
Luckily enough, we'd passed another brand new permission on the way here that was in stubble, so a quick text to the land owner and the reply was just one word..... "Yes".
We packed up and set off for permission number two which may be predominantly Romano-British.

The images for site No 1 can be seen here.

Site No 2
We arrived at the second site with the field being very large at 75 acres but we were only interested in surveying a 400ft square section that was adjacent to a permission we acquired in January this year which produced lots of Roman and some Saxon artefacts.

The machines were set up exactly as above.
We detected towards the targeted area we had in mind to survey and recovered a few pre-decimal coins in amongst some green waste. Thankfully it wasn't too bad.
As soon as we arrived at the survey area we started to recover Romano-British artefacts as expected.

A lovely Roman spoon with a large suspension loop and lead still in its bowl, was recovered. Amongst the eight Roman coins was a lovely example of a 'quinarius' of Allectus which was an experimental denomination and only issued during this reign.
A lead ingot weighing in at 216 grams and a huge circular lead peice weighing in at 926 grams were just some of the lead items recovered.
A chinese coin and pieces of Roman pottery were added to the montage of finds from this site.

Images of the finds for site No 2 can be seen here.

All in all it turned out ok thanks to our brand new back up Roman site.

Now were're scratching our heads as to where we are going on our next foray as site No1 may have been rolled. If not, there's another brand new site that we should have 'phoned the landowner in mid-August but we're not sure what historical periods would show up there?

Well, after several alternating weather forecasts for Sunday going from sunny to cloud and rain we decided to risk it and give it a go.
It was dull and slightly damp when we set off but the skies appeared to clear somewhat and it ended up being very sunny indeed!
The only problem was that I'd dressed for cooler weather so I was absolutely boiling!!!
Steve couldn't make this trip, so it was just Rob and I.

The field was cultivated and very dry considering the amount of rain that had passed through.

It was fairly rough but we thought it was worth surveying, although after four hours Rob had endured enough. I wasn't too bad, having elasticated ankles from several years of playing squash.
We left the field earlier than planned and thought that we'd save it for another day perhaps.

Background, conditions and machine set up.
We surveyed this field for the first time back in April this year and this was our second visit. The cultivation had disturbed several more pieces of C13th to C14th pottery along with a few pieces from later centuries. Only eight metallic artefacts were recovered, possibly because of air in the soil and that we'd lost a little depth due to the rough textured surface.
The eight items consisted of; a sixpence of Elizabeth Ist 1568, a medieval dress hook, a possible purse bar, an early buckle, a silver plated button and what appears to be an iron arrow tip were however recovered. These can be seen here.

The machines were set up with the small coils and using the GMP mode in 12 and 18khz. Rob used "Tracking" and I elected to go for the manual GB set at 80. A couple of times we had to revert to "Fast" as the ferrous contamination was quite high. Talking of contamination, the mineralisation levels were the highest I'd seen for a long while. This too would have a detrimental effect on the penetration depth. The level was indicating at maximum on the scale on several occaisions which caused the Déus to go eerily silent. There was almost a constant background level of mineralisation with the Déus' readout showing anything from one notch upwards.

Funny thing though, there was no coke anywhere to be seen?!?

On the wildlife side of things we did see a stoat, a red kite, a great white egret, a hare and a rat running around the field which disappeared somewhere in the middle of it!

Hopefully we'll be out in full force next weekend going somewhere special for Robs birthday!

The images for the day can be viewed here.