Today was the second visit this season to one of our oldest permissions; TS1 and with even less daylight than last week we had 7hrs and 57mins to complete today's survey. The weather was great when we arrived just as dawn was breaking.

With only Rob and myself to carry out the survey, we switched on as soon as we could. We invited one of the MDF forum members (Scott T) along but he couldn't make it as he was working late and decided to have a lie-in and power wash the drive instead.

We located the point at which we finished last week and made our way down the newly seeded wheat lines.
​It wasn't long before the first of the Roman coins were recovered with the Déus' set at GMP with the 13" x 11" coils. It just goes to show how sensitive the large coils are retrieving minims that were several times smaller than the denarii we'd found here. The brooches were just blowing the headphones off and for a change, some of the finds were coming in at 5 and 6 inches deep. Not bad for a Roman site that has been used for over 350 years. Mind you, the nail count was pretty high and the mineralisation was high too with lots of burning going on.
This was backed up by the recovery of several pieces of molten bronze scattered over the site.

My next line was to search along the 24 metre tractor lines and in the tyre track I got a small signal that sounded "good" but bounced from 34 to 45, a typical "foil" signal. The thing is... this field is in the middle of nowhere so not much chance of foil being there. Sure enough, it was a tiny Celtic silver unit.

The finds came in dribs and drabs with; 55 bronze Roman coins, a denarius of Julia Domna, a siliqua of Magnus Maximus, an Iron Age toggle fastener (dumbbell style), a superb Roman intaglio ring completely undamaged, a beautiful gold Roman intaglio ring insert, three Roman brooches, Roman pottery in the form of Samian Ware, Grey Ware and Grit Ware with a lovely piece of Bronze Age pottery being recovered too. Four knapped flint pieces were also recovered with one in the form of a nice opaque leaf blade.
In all there were 29 pieces of pottery.

The impression from the gold piece looks like a depiction of the Lighthouse at Alexandria in Egypt whilst the other intaglio appears to be an altar and cross above it?

The full set of High Definition images can be seen here.

Today we paid a visit to a permission (TS1) of which we hadn't been to since 10th April this year. We had 8 hours 18 minutes of daylight to complete today's survey. With 20 minutes less light than last week we had to make the most of it. We had another pair of hands to help so we had two large coils and a standard 9" coil all powered by the GMP mode.

The first signal was a first century Roman fibula complete with pin. This appeared to be a better start than it was back in April.
Steadily, more Roman coins and grots, four Roman fibula fragments, Roman pottery and flint came up from the newly seeded ground. The top soil is on average 30 inches deep, below this is solid chalk.
After a very sticky beginning, the sun and breeze started to dry off the surface and therefore reduce the weight burden of the Muck Boots!
Surprisingly, quite a few Medieval artefacts were recovered and the obligatory hammered in the form of a Queen Elizabeth Ist half groat. 
Another lovely find was a miniature lead votive axe and a denarius of Trajan dating to 98 AD. A C13th Medieval shield type pendant with enamel still showing also came up. Another find of note was a leaf shaped arrow head.

Our third man retrieved a signal and consequently put it in his pouch instead of the finds box. Rob just happened to be adjacent to him when he said it was only a nail and spotted that it was indeed a Roman fibula!
Alarmingly he said he'd found a few bronze "nails". Thankfully they were actually copper nails. It makes you wonder how many artefacts have been mis-diagnosed over the years.

Forty-three Roman coins were recovered in total including the Trajan denarius.
As you can see from the montage, the machines were picking up tiny minims. As an example, the minim pictured here against the Trajan denarius which is 8.54 times the mass of the minim and 2.17 times the diameter of the minim. If you're recovering minims of this size then you won't miss other coinage such as denarii, nummi or Medieval coinage, unless you use a <100% coverage policy.

High Definition images can be seen here.
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What a beautiful morning to re-visit our permission "MC", the "code" identifies each permission against every relevant Flickr entry thus enabling ease of site recall. This allows a full and transparent data audit process to all our finds from as far back as September 11th 2011.

Apparently, we only had 8 hours and 38 minutes of light to accomplish our plans for the day!
The plan was to assess the condition of one of the potato fields at MC as most of the crop had been lifted and then move over to a newly drilled winter wheat field. 
We were warned by the landowner that the potato field might be a tad challenging as there had been copious amounts of rain during the week and the previous day. 
Sure enough, the field was indeed challenging, but manageable. With constant mud-shedding, the wellies weight were kept to a minimum.
Hardly any signals were encountered over a two hour period and found this this odd. Weathered footprints led us to believe that the accessible parts of the field had already been searched by a couple of local detectorists. They had done a good job with only eight targets missed!
We were using the 9" coils, GMP mode with one on manual GB and the machine on "auto" GB tracking.

We upped sticks, jumped into the SV and relocated to the field next door.
We swapped to the 13" x 11" coils but used the same settings.
This was more like it, with signals showing straight away. Iron, lead and a lovely copper-alloy finger ring being the first identifiable recovery.
Fragments of copper-alloy artefacts were recovered including Roman pin heads, Roman fibula, buckles, coins and unbelievably... three hammered coins!
Quite a few silver items were also found along with worked flint and a 1943 thru-penny bit.

Six tractors and loads of kit arrived in the potato where we were earlier and they continued to lift the potatoes there. Hopefully they will have now finished allowing the landowner to carry on and re-plough and re-seed the next crop soon.

Well, that was it, our 8 hours and 38 minutes were up and with that we headed back to the SV to gear down and set off home.
A huge and beautiful orange moon rose over the horizon as we finished off.
With only 6 hours coverage this 40 acre field requires a minimum of another 84 hours between two people to cover it 100%. That would equate to a minimum of 10 further days surveying so it may be doubtful that this is achievable as there are other permissions that we've missed out on and need a visit.

High Definition images of the day can be seen here.

With wet weather threatening our East of Britain sites our choice for today was the West Country. We decided to return to Cumbria to carry on from exactly where we left off on the 13th October.
A cool northerly breeze kept the temperature down to 9C but the views were spectacular with the snow-capped mountains of the Lake District in the background.

With large coils attached and the usual standard GMP mode with manual GB tracking on one and "auto" on the second machine, we started from the precise spot where we finished in October.
The field is seeded with winter barley and the soil extremely sandy which is superb to dig. 
The first signal after just two minutes was a sestertius in poor conditions at a depth of eight inches. This seemed to be a great start but expectations soon dropped as several shotgun cartridge caps and even more coke pieces took the place of good artefacts and coins. On the positive side, these were coming up from impressive depths with some of the caps retrieved from ten inches!

We were met by local historical expert Cedric Bell who has written several articles on the Roman occupation of Cumbria with emphasis on the Roman canals and harbours as well as the Chinese labourer's encamped there. The Chinese were used to build parts of Hadrian's Wall and were highly experienced in mining.
Cedric has travelled to New Zealand and Nova Scotia tracking the Chinese Junks that have travelled here and to many other continents.

An wide mix of coinage was recovered with a nice denarius of Geta and coins of Queen Elizabeth I, William II, George II, George III, Victoria coming to light. One Medieval buckle and two lead net weights were also recovered.

Images of the day can be seen here.