We arrived at our latest new permission at the break of dawn. The area is surrounded by history with ancient tumuli and Romano-British crop marks as well as a village dating to the C8th.
The weather was superb but cool with great views of the surrounding area.
We'd arranged to meet the landowner at 8am but we were a little early so we did a quick reccy.
We drove to the farm and knocked at the door there. A lovely gentleman greeted us and said that we would need to go to the farm buildings nearby.
We did so but couldn't see anyone around.
I rang the landowner and he said he wasn't aware that we were coming.
This was probably due to me emailing his wife over Christmas and I didn't get a reply but chanced a visit anyway!
He said that he would be setting off soon from wherever he was to meet us as he had to feed the cattle at the farm.
He arrived and apologised for the confusion but I said that it was down to me. He looked at the maps I had and he advised where we might want to look. He added that he had a report that the archaeologists compiled and we could borrow it.

We set off down the field and jeeps!! .... it was so long! 
We only had a few signals and decided to reccy another area. 
As we were having a coffee the landowner arrived with a ring binder with all the archaeological documents relating to a survey the archaeologists carried out some time ago.
The landowner suggested we speak to his father-in-law as he knew everything regarding the history there.
We arranged to meet over a coffee next Sunday and he would show us all his finds recovered over a hundred years or so ago.
Apparently, the history spills over onto adjacent farms and he thought that we'd have no trouble in acquiring permission there.

Even though we only had a few signals we managed to recover a few nice items.
One in particular was a Saxon belt slider with typical ring punch decoration and the other was a corroded sestertius.

Images of the recovered finds can be seen HERE.

We decided to pack in slightly early as we had planned to drop off a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a lovely Christmas tray of chocolate biscuits at another landowner nearby.
This landowner owns a field where we recovered 9 Roman fibulae and a beautiful denarius of Commodus as well as 173 Roman coins.

He was busy bringing in the latest harvest of sprouts but was quite cordial and suggested I ring him in a few weeks to check if the field had been rolled. With that, we set off home with a golden glow as it meant that all three of The PAST could survey this great field. 
We happened to mention that we were surveying in another part of the country (about 250 miles away) and he knew the landowner there!!! It's a very small world indeed!!!

We are so looking forward to the start of 2015 as we are so blessed with some great land that has superb potential.
There are some exciting times ahead.

A dry start to the day saw us complete the survey of the 24 acre field we've been surveying over the last three weeks.
As expected, the finds recovered were far less in comparison to the two previous surveys, especially the survey from the week earlier.

We think we now have a good idea as to where the bulk of activity and occupation exists on the field.

The Déus' had the 13 inch coils fitted and set to GMP "Fast", 18khz, "Full Tones", GB on "Tracking" and Manual.
There was a high degree of ferrous contamination in large patches of the search area. A small amount of Roman and medieval pottery as well as knapped flint shards were recovered.
The whole area has a large amount of flint scatter.

The most unusual find was that of a large lead spindle whorl, decorated with pellets on one side and radial lines on the other. This is indeed a very rare find for this survey site.
In contrast to last weeks large Trumpet fibula was a fragment of a very small trumpet brooch.

We are now feeling farily comfortable with the Full Tone setting as this gives a greater picture of what you are scanning. You still get the ferrous buzz at one end of the scale and the high tones at the other, but its the in-between tones that are new to the ear. 

The images for the day can be seen here.

The  quest now is to decide where to survey next week!

Well, ...here it is.... our first year together as a team of three members forming The PAST!
And what a way to celebrate with a beautiful bronze stater of the Corieltauvi tribe, fantastic Roman brooches and coins and a fine example of a Henry VI penny from Calais!! This was going to be a very memorable day indeed!

The day started off miserablely with the rain that we knew was forecast for that morning. We sat in the support vehicle (which may be changed ...as we burnt the clutch out the other week!) and waited for the rain to stop. On cue, it did stop and we donned the Muck Boots then jumped in the 4x4 and set off down the field as it was a huge walk otherwise.

On arrival at the far end of the field we kitted up and started the survey from where we left off last week.
The Déus' were set up in GMP and 13" x 11" coils GMP mode alternated with the Full Tone setting, Rob "Tracking" and I was using the "Manual" setting in 18khz.
The Full Tone setting took a little getting used to as it produced sounds I'd never heard form the Déus before. Rob gave it a go too and we decided that we quite like it. It's so easy though to flick between modes to check any differences in the signals.
We will certainly be giving it another go next week when we conclude the survey in this field.

We moved all the way along the southern edge of the field without anything exciting happening! Must admit, as we got nearer to the fence where we found lots of RB items on the farm next door our expectations rose. We got to the fence between the two farms and NOTHING! We couldn't believe that five feet away in the next field was a wealth of RB archaeology!!! We then thought cleverly .....we decided to follow the fence that split the farms in the hope of finding more Romano-British..... WRONG again! Nothing at all... this had us scratching our heads like we had a serious case of nits! How could so much stuff be just a few feet away at the other side of the fence (which obviously didn't exist in 43AD) and yet here on this side we had nothing!
We eventually got to a point along the fence line and decided to turn 180 degrees and come back in the opposite direction we had just travelled.

It was on this leg of the survey that I decided to try the new setting again using Full Tones.... two seconds later I got a cracking signal. I changed back to GMP just to see what difference there was. Not much really as the Full tones gave some weird yet bright sounds and GMP gave the usual "this is a great signal DIG IT!!!". The figures registered 81 for both settings by the way.

Rob was interested in my new settings and with what they may have produced. I said "This is brooch territory"... Rob smiled sarcastically.
As I turned over the first small spadefull Rob exclaimed "Roman!" and as he said that we caught a glimpse of what we thought was a large Roman coin such as a follis or dupondius. As I dropped to my knees to examine the newly unearthed soil Rob changed his plea to "Jeez.... it's a brooch!"
Wowee.... what a stonker of a brooch... a huge trumpet fibula with its pin still attached. Rob, Steve and I just stared in amazement.

Next were two Roman coins and I moaned that I'd not found one.
My next signal produced a Roman coin....a lovely denarius... a Roman coin each now LOL!!
The next artefact was a really nice Celtic belt slider from Steves XP Gold Maxx Power and MASSIVE  18" x 15" search coil. All sorts of medieval and RB items appeared
but they were well spread. If someone came onto the field and searched it randomly, most of it would have been missed for sure.

We broke for late lunch after completing the southern third of the field.
We then started on the northern section of the 24 acre field. The first signal after lunch was the cracking bronze starter, a very good start to the afternoon session. The stater is of the Corieltauvi tribe based in the East Midland and was gold plated at some point in its past.
More Roman coins emerged and another superb Roman fibula was recovered... a headstud type showing a vivd blue enammel on the headstud itself.

We came to the conclusion that the day wouldn't be complete without the ubiquitous hammered coin to keep the majority of the forums happy.
Sure enough Rob came to the rescue with a superb hammered coin to fit the bill. It was a Henry VI penny, Calais mint c.1422.

All in all, a great day to celebrate our first year as The PAST.

We have plans to balance out the Celtic and Roman sites we have with some early medieval and medieval sites to keep things interesting.
After all... it's nice to find a lovely decorated spindle whorl or a beautiful strapend buckle for example.

This could be the future of The PAST.......

For the images of the day please click here.