I've been involved with metal detecting since 1978.
Over that period I've gained some knowledge on the hobby.

Here we are in 2022, and I'm extremely happy to report that we are at a great stage in our progression. 
Even though our last season was disappointing, we still managed to recover some great artefacts.

I recently visited 3 detecting forums that I've not posted on for quite a while.
One in particular was extremely hostile to the free advice given.

I think I'll give the forums a miss and let them dwell on their pie-in-the-sky dreams. 

​On a MUCH brighter note, we're out this weekend.

Another early start visiting a field we only skirted around in 2016.
This is the field that the landowner asked us to search for a gold earring that was lost by one of the shooters. The lady that lost it was a very high ranking official in UNESCO. We did find it by the way :)

The weather wasn't too bad and the field was drilled with wheat.
It was looking good when fragments of Medieval pottery started to show.
A cut-half was the first Medieval artefact to see the light of day with a cut-quarter following as well as a nice small buckle.

Oddly enough, we ended up at the other end of the field that I suggested we search and on the return leg of the journey a signal was heard. It was another quite shallow signal, about 4-inches deep and when extracted the finders heart skipped a beat for a nano second. The finder said "Jeeps! I thought it was a piece of a gold coin". Now, thinking it was a piece of gold foil, brushing away a little of the soil revealed latin embossed wording around the circumference. Indeed, it was a gold hammered coin!

We carried on with the survey until the heavens openedand boy, did the sky open! Within 3-minutes we were soaked.

We called in at the landowners farmhouse to show them the first gold coin we'd ever found there since detecting at the estate in 2016.
After tea and biscuits we bid our farewell's and made the journey home.

We had notification that one of our permissions had been completely drilled up a few weeks ago.
The weather looked good for the Saturday so we made an 8am start on a field we'd not been on for 3-years as it had been returned to pasture.
Imagine our surprise when we saw that it had been 'worked' in August.

The wheat crop was showing through at about 4 inches in length.
Weather conditions were superb for the time of year with temperatures reaching 17C.

It took 90-minutes before any of the three of us had a decent find with only foil and bits of lead coming up.
The first find was a lead bell that had been flattened. On inspection, it had four faces equally spaced at 90 degrees around the circumference.
The FLO said that the bell was a pilgrims bell and was connected to Bridlington Priory and Saint John of Bridlington and dated just after his canonisation in 1401. The FLO added that when recorded on PAS, it should state 'Find of Note' and local importance.

Over the next eight and a half hours we recovered 4.5 kilos of Medieval pottery including 28 jug handle fragments. There were several other artefacts including Devil's Toe Nails, animal teeth, a boar's tusk, strapend fragments, finger rings, a lovely casket key and coinage.

Another find of note is a padlock of which there are no comparisons currently. Thoughts are it could be Roman or Early Medieval?
A  third find of note is a French jetton in remarkable condition dating 1380 - 1420.
Finally, a fourth find of note is a Viking penny of Eric Bloodaxe (2nd reign).

Altogether, there were 10 silver hammered coins, 5 Roman coins, a jetton  and a couple of pre-decimal.

A long day, but worth it in the end.

HD images of all the recoveries can be seen here.

We had a few days to explore some new land and a new (temporary) permission recently as well as catching up with the annual archaeological excavation at one of our permissions.

The excavation went well and this year was the final dig in the field where we discovered a substantial Roman building that was there from AD 79.
The site is ancient and dates right back to at least the Mesolithic period.
The great news from this particular farm is that two of the fields that were in grass have been worked in order to plant wheat again.
One of the fields where we discovered a Roman villa will have the grass there worked for a crop next year.
We have had some great results on one of the above worked fields a couple of weeks ago with some lovely Medieval items being recovered which can be seen here.
We can't wait until it's drilled with wheat in the next month or so!

One of the gamekeepers at an estate that we have permission told us about a field he once detected years ago at another farm with finds of Roman coins and a few brooches. He thought it might be a villa.
We gained temporary permission (2-days) from the landowner due to a detectorist already having permission.
Sure enough, there had been a substantial Roman building there with several wall bricks as well as roof and floor tiles.
Seeing that the area had been detected constantly for over 20-years we still managed to recover 7 Roman coins that can be seen here.
I recieved an email from the landowner and he was amazed at the amount finds we had recovered.
​Unfortunately, we didn't get further permission, even though they have 4 huge farms under there farming group. Never mind.

On to one of our estate permissions and we had a chance to survey another field that had crop marks that looked Roman.
An ancient trackway ran right through the field and crop marks, but very few items were recovered but the results can be seen here.
A large part of the estate has pasture which has quite a few humps and bumps. Although the ground was very dry, we still managed to find a few items covering the Roman to modern periods and these can be seen here.
We look forward to returning when the ground is much damper.

I think that our next outing will be 4-days on The Holy Island of Lindisfarne where we're fortunate to have permission to detect the trenches and spoil heaps of the ongoing archaeological dig there.
​The dig is a joint venture with Durham University and the fantastic DigVentures team.

We thought that previous seasons were a little unkind regarding the amount of outings we had. The 2021/2022 season was perhaps the worst in that respect.
Oddly enough, the finds we did recover were exceptional, especially Early Medieval finds, from lovely examples of coinage to the gloriously beautiful Anglo-Saxon Aestel recovered in January this year.
The landowner has not seen this find as of yet (we did call in four times) so perhaps when we're next in the vicinity, we may succeed in tracking him down.

We are still in the process of trying to establish new permissions for the new season, so hopefully in the next few weeks or so we may have some exciting land to explore.

This year see's the 5th annual dig on one of our farms with new trenches in the field which features one of the earliest Roman buildings for the area.
There are already plans for 2023 with an exploratory trench covering an area where we think there may be a Roman shrine.
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Lets hope we have blogs for each month covering September 2022 through to April 2023.

On Friday 17th December 2021 we asked one of our landowners if we could revisit a field we last surveyed 22nd August 2019.
The answer was yes so we planned our visit for Sunday 19th December 2021.

We recovered 69 Roman coins and over 4 kilo's of Roman pottery including tegulae and a piece of imbrex.
Thoughts are that there are at least 2 Roman buildings there.

After the Christmas and New Year celebrations (very low-key) and a spell of dry-ish weather, we made a visit to the number 2 field we had targetted.
On arrival (Sunday 16th January 2022) we were confronted with a field full of knee-length crop.
Our hearts sank a little, well a lot really so we thought we could see if we could rescue the situation somehow.
We managed to find a few areas where the crop hadn't grown too well so the opportunity to have a small reccy was taken.
The plan was to spend about an hour or so in this field then head over to the field where we had recovered the Roman coins and pottery in December.

I got a call on the radio from Robin that he had found something interesting so I walked over to have a look at this "interesting" find.
It was a piece of gold jewellry and I instantly thought that it looked Anglo-Saxon with a zoomorphic feature.
After taking a picture and uploading to a social media site it was confirmed that it was indeed Anglo-Saxon and was in fact an Aestel.
These were used to point out caligraphy in ancient manuscipts and this piece is dated to c. AD 850 - AD 999 so used during the reign of King Alfred.
Apparently, it was Alfred that had these commissioned and sent out with some of the newly translated religious texts from Latin to Anglo-Saxon.
The only other find of note was a Roman trumpet brooch which still had most of its pin intact.

With the searchable patches covered, we returned to field number 1 where more Roman coinage was unearthed..... and more pottery.

We were contacted by one of our landowners and asked if we could locate an earring lost during a shoot on their land.
The earrings were specially commissioned in Hanoi for a high-ranking official visiting there.

Robin (one of our team) very kindly volunteered to visit the farm and search for the item of jewellry of which the owner was quite upset about the loss.

On arrival at the farm, the landowner drove him to the shooting area and dropped him off there.
Within 5 minutes of setting up the machine, Robin successfully located the earring but the rear clasp was still missing.
​
The landowner was called and the good news passed on.

We heard in the second half of 2021 that XP were going to launch a brand new version of the original iconic XP Déus in December 2021.
The launch was delayed to January 7th 2022 with most suppliers operating a first-come, first-served basis.
This led to a chaotic attempt for people to try and acquire a Déus II.
​
One retailer announced before the launch that the only way to purchase a machine was online only as the shop was shut and not taking 'phone orders. Unfortunately, those that stuck to those rules missed out but those that didn't could order over the telephone.

The majority of the machines appear to have gone to YouTube influencers rather than experienced detectorists.
This is supported by the lack of the expected avalanche of finds that were expected, whether imaginary or factual.
There are far more images of Déus II boxes and machines than there are of the anticipated finds.
​
Looking at the forums, nothing has changed at all!

A couple of the team have decided to perhaps purchase a Déus II, not because it is percieved to find more, it's simply more robust and there may be an advantage with it being a multi-frequency machine.
There's no rush to buy a Déus II as the Déus One has proved to be the best machine to date for us.

​Just as a reminder, this is what we've found with the Déus One.... Enjoy!

We revisited a site that we last surveyed in August 2019.
The field was in stubble in 2019 but was drilled with Winter Wheat this time around.
In 2019 we found about 63 pieces of Roman and Medieval pottery.
This visit produced well over 200 pieces of pottery (4.1Kg) from the Roman and Medieval periods. This shows that a freshly drilled field will reveal far more surface finds than a stubble field due to the Wheat chaff covering the surface.

Apart from constantly stooping to collect surface finds we had several metallic signals. Most of these were consentrated over an area that had large limestone rocks strewn across the surface. Amongst these were several pieces of Tegulae (Roman roof tiles) of differing sizes. This shows that there is at least one substantial Roman building here.

Apart from the pottery and non-metallic finds, we recovered 69 Roman coins, one Medieval coin and several metallic artefacts covering many historical periods. Belt mounts, Roman tweezers, a fibula pin, a Medieval casket key, Medieval skillet fragments and lots of lead pot-mends were included.

The crop was about 5-inches high so swinging the coils wasn't a problem.
Surface visibility was excellent, hence the vast amount of pottery that was recovered.

The consensus is that the site has Bronze Age beginnings with a Romano-British presence from AD 152 with increased ​activity in the late third century leading into the fourth century. The site is situated on the original Roman road running from a major Roman settlement to a Roman port or ferry point.
There is also evidence of a small amount of C14th activity in the field.

The images of the days finds can be seen here.​

Our Roman Site that has been excavated by DigVentures over the last 5-years has reached 100% funding within 24-hours of being launched.
​They are returning to this astounding site we discovered to uncover even more secrets of the farm's Roman past.

The excavation is scheduled to take place in August 2022 and will last for two weeks.

Their website has all the information on what has been discovered there.

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