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Saturday 23rd August 2014

26/8/2014

1 Comment

 
We started the Bank Holiday weekend with a trip to one of our new 2014 permissions. We have only surveyed this permission twice before and that was on pasture during the 1st June and the 8th June this year.

There are three fields in particular out of a minimum of eighteen that we were interested in surveying identified via research there.
Field number 2 (10 acres) was in wheat stubble and quite easy to search as the stubble was fairly soft. It was this field that produced most of the days recoveries.

Steve was using his XP Goldmaxx Power with giant coil and Rob and I were using the XP Déus machines with large coils set to GMP, standard settings except for the GB mode. I set GB to 85 and Rob was using the "Tracking" setting.
All finds were recovered at a depth no deeper than 5 inches at maximum with some artefacts on the surface. Also, most of the finds (90%) came from the northern half of the field adjacent to a road.

There were the usual amounts of lead and small ferrous signals that come with continuous use over 2000 years. Although this area is steeped in history, it was still a challenge to uncover its secrets.
A couple of clog clasps emerged followed by a Roman grot and a Roman bronze with slightly more detail. 
On the way to the site I said to Rob that it wouldn't be long before he finds his first denarius. A couple of hours after that statement... he found one! What a lovely coin it was too,.... and his first! It looks to be a denarius of *Severus Alexander, AD 222 - 235.
Another signal at 4 inches read 68-71 on the Déus readout. It was a hammered *Edward 1st penny class 4b Canterbury mint dated to c.AD 1295.
It was Robs turn for the next hammered coin, a small Elizabethan recovery.
A pot-mend and a piece of pottery thats looks like a fragment of a cremation urn. To complete the fields "treasures" was a small Saxon strapend.

We moved to field number 5 (20 acres) that has had an archaeological dig there a few years ago of which revealed a Saxon homestead there. We covered that area with only one piece of early medieval evidence, a buckle partifact.
A William III shilling 1697 and a handful of pre-decimal coins were recovered. No other items of note came to light for recording.

We decided that field number 15 (13.6 acres) would have to wait as we decided to call it a day seeing that we were surveying a brand new site in a totally different part of the country the next day!

Please find images of the artefacts recovered on the day here.

*Thanks to Allectus, Alloverover and Cantiaci for the ID's here.


 


1 Comment
Bob
26/8/2014 06:45:58

Again Paul well written about your day great finds so much land you two have excellent stuff keep good work going you two

Reply



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