Today was another leap into the unknown with a visit to a permission that we've never been to before.
The landowner commented that we should be okay to survey this 25-acre Winter Wheat field as the crop was quite short.
Sure enough, the crop was short and we had great visibility of the field surface.
We set off armed with the 9" coils (one standard and two HF) which were initially set at GMP with one at 14KHz, one at 18KHz and the other at 28KHz. One of the machines was switched between Manual GB at 82 and Tracking.
Within seconds we came across the first of 247 fragments of Medieval pottery dating between Anglo-Saxon and the Post Medieval periods.
The total weight of the pottery was 8.9Kg!
This consisted of many fragments of side vessel and base units but there were at least 46 jug handles and some of those were huge!
We had a map showing the Medieval settlement and one area showed a Saxon house, this is where the styca was recovered and fragments of Anglo-Saxon pottery.
The Medieval houses on the map revealed themselves in the form of hundreds and hundreds of ferrous signals. One of these ferrous items was a key and there were at least two huge door studs (like those you see on massive church doors) as well as several Medieval nails.
Déus Fast was called for and this was the program that winkled out the styca from all the ferrous targets surrounding it.
Some lovely Tudor pottery was also recovered which is always nice to see.
An interesting fact was that there were lots of animal bones lying around as well as several animal teeth.
These appeared to be cattle, sheep and pigs teeth with oyster shells and cockle shells to add to the diet.
We even managed to find a fossil oyster shell!
Some nice Medieval buckles surfaced (one being a cracking Saxon buckle) with strapends, mounts and other Medieval paraphernalia added to the mix.
Coinage was quite sparse with a farthing of Edward I, two Nuremberg jettons and a silver half-crown of Queen Anne (1707) turning up!
Oddly, there was a huge lead Medieval steelyard weight that may have been used to build the nearby Medieval church?
A beer bottle top from Hewitt's Brewery at Grimsby was amongst the 2,200g of rubbish/modern stuff we recovered. This was strange as we were on Southport beach (just kidding).
As you saw, we posted the image of the rubbish the other day. That included six horseshoes that were lying on the field surface.
Amongst the ferrous objects were a couple of those huge studs you find in church or hall doors, a key, a spear-headed shaped item (similar to the one on 'detectorist's) and some sort of mechanism.
A local chap stopped by and commented that is was "wrong" to be digging up the farmers crops. I approached him and assured him we had permission to dig there and that the landowner acknowledged that there was indeed crop in this field. He backed off a little then began to tell us about the local history regarding detectorist's.
He said that lots of detectorist's had searched the field beforehand and worryingly, he said they'd also searched the Scheduled Monument nearby!
We had already surmised that the field we were in had been saturated by previous detectorist's as there should have been far more metallic Medieval finds. The pottery to metallic finds ratio was well out of sync.
There is strong possibility that some of the pottery was rejected and ended up in pits.
We will probably give this field miss in the future but at least we have a foot-in-the-door and will pursue other areas that look to be "interesting" as the farmhouse is over three miles from the field we surveyed.
Fingers crossed that the next fields we've researched may have something interesting in them.
High Definition images of the finds can be seen here.
The landowner commented that we should be okay to survey this 25-acre Winter Wheat field as the crop was quite short.
Sure enough, the crop was short and we had great visibility of the field surface.
We set off armed with the 9" coils (one standard and two HF) which were initially set at GMP with one at 14KHz, one at 18KHz and the other at 28KHz. One of the machines was switched between Manual GB at 82 and Tracking.
Within seconds we came across the first of 247 fragments of Medieval pottery dating between Anglo-Saxon and the Post Medieval periods.
The total weight of the pottery was 8.9Kg!
This consisted of many fragments of side vessel and base units but there were at least 46 jug handles and some of those were huge!
We had a map showing the Medieval settlement and one area showed a Saxon house, this is where the styca was recovered and fragments of Anglo-Saxon pottery.
The Medieval houses on the map revealed themselves in the form of hundreds and hundreds of ferrous signals. One of these ferrous items was a key and there were at least two huge door studs (like those you see on massive church doors) as well as several Medieval nails.
Déus Fast was called for and this was the program that winkled out the styca from all the ferrous targets surrounding it.
Some lovely Tudor pottery was also recovered which is always nice to see.
An interesting fact was that there were lots of animal bones lying around as well as several animal teeth.
These appeared to be cattle, sheep and pigs teeth with oyster shells and cockle shells to add to the diet.
We even managed to find a fossil oyster shell!
Some nice Medieval buckles surfaced (one being a cracking Saxon buckle) with strapends, mounts and other Medieval paraphernalia added to the mix.
Coinage was quite sparse with a farthing of Edward I, two Nuremberg jettons and a silver half-crown of Queen Anne (1707) turning up!
Oddly, there was a huge lead Medieval steelyard weight that may have been used to build the nearby Medieval church?
A beer bottle top from Hewitt's Brewery at Grimsby was amongst the 2,200g of rubbish/modern stuff we recovered. This was strange as we were on Southport beach (just kidding).
As you saw, we posted the image of the rubbish the other day. That included six horseshoes that were lying on the field surface.
Amongst the ferrous objects were a couple of those huge studs you find in church or hall doors, a key, a spear-headed shaped item (similar to the one on 'detectorist's) and some sort of mechanism.
A local chap stopped by and commented that is was "wrong" to be digging up the farmers crops. I approached him and assured him we had permission to dig there and that the landowner acknowledged that there was indeed crop in this field. He backed off a little then began to tell us about the local history regarding detectorist's.
He said that lots of detectorist's had searched the field beforehand and worryingly, he said they'd also searched the Scheduled Monument nearby!
We had already surmised that the field we were in had been saturated by previous detectorist's as there should have been far more metallic Medieval finds. The pottery to metallic finds ratio was well out of sync.
There is strong possibility that some of the pottery was rejected and ended up in pits.
We will probably give this field miss in the future but at least we have a foot-in-the-door and will pursue other areas that look to be "interesting" as the farmhouse is over three miles from the field we surveyed.
Fingers crossed that the next fields we've researched may have something interesting in them.
High Definition images of the finds can be seen here.
RSS Feed
