Todays survey saw us revisiting the field we call Toy Soldier One (TS1). Apart from the recent two hour visit on 22nd March, it was 29th October 2013 when we last surveyed here. The reason for the 17 month gap was simply down to crop conditions.
The weather conditions weren't the best, with a grey, drizzly and misty start to the day. On arrival, the conditions were exactly the same.
We elected to go for full waterproofs just in case it worsened.
It actually improved after 10am!
The machines were attached to the 13" x 11" coils and set up as follows:
Déus #1; GMP, 18 & 12 khz, GB Tracking then manual 75
Déus #2; GMP, 18 khz, GB Tracking
Déus #3; GMP & Fast, 18 khz, GB Tracking
The field was in a rolled state with high ridges running down the full length of the rolled area. The ridges made it difficult at times to action a full two width scan resulting in perhaps 10% of the field being missed.
An hour into the survey a vehicle pulled up at the field edge and a chap came over to us and asked who we were. I thought it was another landowner but it turned out that it was another detectorist!!! It was agreed that he would start at the opposite side of the field and work towards us.
This was quite important as we had an archaeologist joining us at some point and wanted the area scanned to our specifications.
Unbelievably, it took one of the team two and a half hours to find his first Roman artefact/coin! Meanwhile, the other two PAST members were recovering small Roman coins and even a Roman trumpet fibula.
The archaeologist arrived onsite and asked how we were doing. After the introductions she carried on with her fieldwalking and we did the same.
Every so often she would meet up with us and was amazed at the amount of pottery, flint and metallic finds we were recovereing.
She said that a friend of hers was flying over and taking pictures of the area as there were some "interesting" earthworks nearby. Sure enough, a Cessna buzzed the area for a while, I just hope my hair was tidy!
Later on in the day she had to leave and very kindly invited us back to her home for tea and cake. I did warn her that it would be later than 7pm when we would finish. In fact it was 7:50pm when we actually decided to call it a day.
This was one of the longst surveys we'd carried out in a long while, lasting 13 hours. However, the recoveries reflect the rewards of such a marathon event. It was imperative that we should finish this area today as we are now running short on time for the remaining seeded areas at other permissions.
Several pieces of Roman-British and Iron Age pottery including Samian Ware were recoverd along with various Roman artefacts, 66 Roman coins including 4 denarii as well as a Celtic Silver Unit of the Corieltauvi tribe. Even an obligatory hammered coin managed to make an appearance. One of the Roman bronze units was, remarkably, the same colour as when minted, a lovely golden bronze colour!
Three spindle whorls were recovered with one looking to be early medieval.
An interesting piece of bronze slag still had a bronze artefact still intact within the molten mass. A nice C2nd trumpet fibula and a fragment of an Iron Age Dragonesque fibula were the only brooch artefacts to surface. A chunky Roman finger ring added to the RB artefact recoveries.
One of the flint pieces we found may be a barbed and tanged neolithic spearhead!
A quick change into our "civvies", then it was off for tea and cake at the home of the lovely lady archaeologist we'd met.
After negotiating all the animals and the over zealous sheepdog (badger) we made our way into the farmhouse kitchen.
With the kettle on the hob we revealed the finds for the day... she and her son were amazed at the amount we'd recovered.
Hopefully, this may stand us in good stead as she has a lot of contacts, both in the farming community and the archeaological world.
The next task was to investigate the problem she was having downloading images from our Flickr site. We found ourselves in the study and a 24" monitor loaded with an email I'd sent previously with the links to Flickr.
One of the links in the email was the home page of our Flickr account showing all the surveys on one page. Again, they were both amazed and mesmerised at the images on screen. After drilling down to the level she required, it was a fairly straight forward process showing her the easiest way of downloading the images.
After a fantastic day and a superb finalé we bid our farewells and headed back to Lancashire.
Images of all the recoveries for the day can be seen here.
The weather conditions weren't the best, with a grey, drizzly and misty start to the day. On arrival, the conditions were exactly the same.
We elected to go for full waterproofs just in case it worsened.
It actually improved after 10am!
The machines were attached to the 13" x 11" coils and set up as follows:
Déus #1; GMP, 18 & 12 khz, GB Tracking then manual 75
Déus #2; GMP, 18 khz, GB Tracking
Déus #3; GMP & Fast, 18 khz, GB Tracking
The field was in a rolled state with high ridges running down the full length of the rolled area. The ridges made it difficult at times to action a full two width scan resulting in perhaps 10% of the field being missed.
An hour into the survey a vehicle pulled up at the field edge and a chap came over to us and asked who we were. I thought it was another landowner but it turned out that it was another detectorist!!! It was agreed that he would start at the opposite side of the field and work towards us.
This was quite important as we had an archaeologist joining us at some point and wanted the area scanned to our specifications.
Unbelievably, it took one of the team two and a half hours to find his first Roman artefact/coin! Meanwhile, the other two PAST members were recovering small Roman coins and even a Roman trumpet fibula.
The archaeologist arrived onsite and asked how we were doing. After the introductions she carried on with her fieldwalking and we did the same.
Every so often she would meet up with us and was amazed at the amount of pottery, flint and metallic finds we were recovereing.
She said that a friend of hers was flying over and taking pictures of the area as there were some "interesting" earthworks nearby. Sure enough, a Cessna buzzed the area for a while, I just hope my hair was tidy!
Later on in the day she had to leave and very kindly invited us back to her home for tea and cake. I did warn her that it would be later than 7pm when we would finish. In fact it was 7:50pm when we actually decided to call it a day.
This was one of the longst surveys we'd carried out in a long while, lasting 13 hours. However, the recoveries reflect the rewards of such a marathon event. It was imperative that we should finish this area today as we are now running short on time for the remaining seeded areas at other permissions.
Several pieces of Roman-British and Iron Age pottery including Samian Ware were recoverd along with various Roman artefacts, 66 Roman coins including 4 denarii as well as a Celtic Silver Unit of the Corieltauvi tribe. Even an obligatory hammered coin managed to make an appearance. One of the Roman bronze units was, remarkably, the same colour as when minted, a lovely golden bronze colour!
Three spindle whorls were recovered with one looking to be early medieval.
An interesting piece of bronze slag still had a bronze artefact still intact within the molten mass. A nice C2nd trumpet fibula and a fragment of an Iron Age Dragonesque fibula were the only brooch artefacts to surface. A chunky Roman finger ring added to the RB artefact recoveries.
One of the flint pieces we found may be a barbed and tanged neolithic spearhead!
A quick change into our "civvies", then it was off for tea and cake at the home of the lovely lady archaeologist we'd met.
After negotiating all the animals and the over zealous sheepdog (badger) we made our way into the farmhouse kitchen.
With the kettle on the hob we revealed the finds for the day... she and her son were amazed at the amount we'd recovered.
Hopefully, this may stand us in good stead as she has a lot of contacts, both in the farming community and the archeaological world.
The next task was to investigate the problem she was having downloading images from our Flickr site. We found ourselves in the study and a 24" monitor loaded with an email I'd sent previously with the links to Flickr.
One of the links in the email was the home page of our Flickr account showing all the surveys on one page. Again, they were both amazed and mesmerised at the images on screen. After drilling down to the level she required, it was a fairly straight forward process showing her the easiest way of downloading the images.
After a fantastic day and a superb finalé we bid our farewells and headed back to Lancashire.
Images of all the recoveries for the day can be seen here.
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