Today's survey saw us revisiting an old favourite, WH, which usually produces Roman items along with some Saxon, Medieval and Post Medieval artefacts. Our last visit was 18th April this year.

Most fields were rolled and seeded with winter wheat and the field we were going to check out measures 40 acres in size.
We elected to use the large Déus coils and GMP mode with the use of one of the "Hot" programs widely available on the internet.
The "Hot" program does however reveal an accurate amount of ferrous items that lay beneath the field surface.

Again, most small finds were recovered from the first three inches of the field surface. In fact, the gold finger ring was in fact on the field surface!!
For those interested in the numbers game; the signal was "double blipped" and the readout was 48 then 52.
Ten Roman coins, two hammered coins in the form of a Henry VIII groat and a sixpence of Queen Elizabeth I and a silver earring were amongst several artefacts recovered. Three pieces of worked flint, a pierced token and a couple of Civil War musket balls also emerged.

Apart from a brief shower, the rest of the day remained dry.
We wrapped up as the light faded looking forward to a return visit next week. That's unless our new Medieval 4 acre field is re-ploughed and rolled.

​Images of today's survey can be seen here.

Today saw the PAST team visiting a new part of our latest permission, AELBEN.
Last week was the first ever visit to this brand new permission taking in a 4 acre field (AELWB) that produced a vast array of C13th & C14th pottery, artefacts and coins.
Todays visit was to survey a 20 acre stubble field with a C17th hall on one side and a C13th church on the other side. There was also a footpath running from one corner of the field directly over to the church in the opposite corner.

After five hours of disciplined search methods, just two hammered coins (Henry III and a Charles I) and a couple of buckles were recovered.
Very little pottery, lead and iron led us to believe that the field wasn't used as intensely as we'd thought.
The executive decision was to revisit the area we were in last week.
​We arrived at a large rolled field that we'd not surveyed as of yet, but for some strange reason we elected to re-check the 4 acre field we'd surveyed last week. This proved to be an astute move as we recovered even more medieval artefacts.

The field had been seeded with wheat and harvested but the crop lines didn't run in parallel so criss-crossed in several areas. This made it difficult to keep an exact track of our search pattern.
It was decided to change our settings slightly by using zero discrimination in the GMP mode, reactivity at 1 and digging any signal that had a brief non-ferrous tone even though it may have been "flooded" out with the iron buzz.
This site has several hundred small ferrous signals.
The small coils were used for a change as this gave better maneuverability amongst the stubble. 
We made several passes at 90 degrees to the pattern we used last week.
Our very first signal was a large C14th key weighing in at 100g and measuring 105mm in length! A huge piece of a skillet leg surfaced too!
Several more artefacts and tokens were recovered along with a lovely hexagonal medieval brooch complete with pin and even some of its stones.
A smaller hexagonal brooch was recovered from the same field last week.
A Norman stirrup mount came to light with a zoomorphic design showing through the openwork.
It just goes to show how important it is to either line out or grid a search area for 100% certainty of coverage when the crop lines aren't in line with each other.

Whilst on the way home we received an email from a landowner who's permission (WH) we've surveyed a few times over the last three years. This is more a Roman site than medieval although quite a few medieval coins have emerged over that time. In fact a couple of Saxon items have also been recovered here.
​It looks like we're heading for WH next week for a change of scenery!