Well, here we are, the last survey of 2016...... and what a gorgeous day it was weather-wise. En-route we were blessed with views of the majestic barn owl hunting by the roadside. It landed on top of the hedgerow giving us a wry and cursory glance. Was this an omen of good luck?
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We arrived at one of our old-time favourites and original sites, codenamed WH. Dawn was just breaking and according to our weather application we had 7hrs 27mins of daylight to play with, an increase of 5 minutes on our last outing! At least the days are now going the right way for everyone.

We chose to start the day on the smallest field that was drilled with winter wheat. Starting at the eastern edge we decided to move inwards (west) following the drilled wheat lines. We were using GMP standard mode as usual with the 13" coils.

As we set off there were quite a lot of ferrous signals, some larger than small nails. The first signal recovered after two minutes was a stater of the Corieltauvi tribe! Rob's answer to this was something on the lines of "get lost, I think you're kidding me"..... that was the edited version to comply with good etiquette and forum rules.
We thought that his either bodes well or it's going to be the "kiss-of-death". The latter became evident. All was not lost however as eight Roman coins were recovered and a hammered penny of Henry III in quite good condition.
Amongst other finds were musket balls, buckle fragments and a small amount of pottery.

We returned to the SV for lunch and spotted the landowner chopping firewood. We went over and re-acquaited ourselves as it was about three years ago since I actually shook hands with him last. He informed us that his son (a doctorate in archaeology) was home later in the day and would be very pleased to see us.

We finished the day with a visit to the farmhouse and were warmly invited in with Christmas greetings and firm handshakes. Being Christmas there were quite a few people in the kitchen (as there are at parties) and all were very curious about the finds that we had recovered.
They were amazed to be able to actually touch something nearly two thousand years old .......and be the first to do so.
We were very fortunate to meet both sons and the atmosphere was brilliant. Both said that they were pleased to help us in any way possible with other aspects of our quest for the gathering of future history. Now that's a term of pure contradiction!

We left with lots of aspirations and visions of what 2017 may hold.
There are several projects in store for the New Year and may involve some forum members.
Hopefully, not as many greatly loved stars may depart in 2017 and will still be with us! After all, two-thirds of ELP are now no more and others such as David Bowie will be sadly missed.

​Happy New Year to all!

​HD images of the days recoveries can be seen here.

Today was going to be slightly different than previous surveys with the addition of one of the forum members joining the PAST for a day out on one of our permissions.
As promised, we invited Scott T along to help out on a 50 acre field that was ploughed and "flat"....... On arrival, we found that the field was not quite as flat as we'd hoped so other options were quickly explored.

The adjacent field was in winter wheat and one that we'd never surveyed.
Initial results looked good with a Roman numus within 5 minutes then a Scottish hammered coin of Alexander III a little later on. This however was not quite the way it panned out with huge amounts of ferrous signals and copious amounts of modern building material evident. After two hours it was decided to choose another available option so we decided to complete the "hoard" field.

We knew that this was going to be hard work as finds are very few and far between within this final section. This was on top of the fact that there is also green waste on the field.
Amazingly, two tiny Roman fibulae in the form of a silvered trumpet brooch (34mm) and a headstud styled brooch were recovered, as well as a denarius of Faustina II and a numus featuring Romulus and Remus.

It was a pleasure to see Scott recover his first ever Roman fibula ...and a complete one at that! Something of an achievement in itself, also Scotts first ever denarius! Two "life firsts" in one day ....after over 5 years of detecting!

I'm sure that if our first option of the 50 acre field had been available, we'd have seen a huge increase in recoveries. This field will be available in late March or early April 2017.

We're hoping to roll-out invitations to other forum members if it fits with the current procedures we use.

Meanwhile, full HD images of all the finds can be seen here.

What a great day it was to complete our 2016 survey at TS1 with only 7hrs 39mins of daylight to complete the task. Thankfully we had the help of Mark, our stand-in team member who performed brilliantly. 

We were armed with three Déus', two fitted with the 11" x 13" coils and the other with the standard 9" coil. Standard GMP was the chosen program with two machines in "Tracking" GB and the other in manual GB set at 90.
As previously reported, the 80 acre field is drilled with winter wheat.

We started exactly where we left off last Sunday and travelled towards the western edge of the field. We anticipated a drop in finds (experience through past visits) and this was reflected in the amount of Roman pottery with just two pieces being found.
However, 37 Roman coins including a denarius, a Celtic silver unit, two hammered Medieval coins, six fibulae and parts thereof were amongst the metallic recoveries from today's survey.

We attempted to film footage with the GoPro 4 we've had in our possession for over a year now. This proved to be quite challenging as you can't detect and film and achieve the results that I would like to see. I'd have to film and not detect at all, or have someone film under direction to get the required results. I'll look at the raw footage we have and see if there is anything to salvage from the cutting room floor.

What a great weekend it was with a visit to our local Michelin Starred restaurant for Christmas lunch, a couple of good films watched (in OLED 3D), some Michelin Starred wine collected, tickets for Depeche Mode's concert in Bologna delivered and another great episode of "Humans" watched. I'm sure that most of us are looking forward to Christmas and the possibility of V4 arriving in the new year along with the new coils and pointer that is due to arrive soon.

​We're taking a break next weekend for more Christmas do's and stuff like that so it'll be December 18th before we're out again with the possibility of another outing on Christmas Eve. At least the days will begin to get longer after Christmas!
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​HD Images of todays survey can be seen here.