Today was going to be a day of great anticipation with another visit to our permission known as JHF1. With the weather looking favourable, the outlook was good. A hunting barn owl was a lovely site at 07:01.
The plan for today was to complete the "Medieval" field and then make a start on the "Denarii Hoard Field", both of which are now seeded with winter wheat.
The Medieval field was seeded in a way that made it a challenge to cover it efficiently. The lines curved and twisted in all directions but we did manage to tame it and were sufficiently satisfied that we'd done it justice.
A cut-half and a half-penny along with several C14th buckles, strapends, belt mounts, a lovely beehive thimble and three Roman grots were recovered along with Medieval and Roman pottery.
The beehive thimble (first signal of the day) goes perfectly with the Medieval darning needle recovered last week.
The field was typical for a settlement area with hundreds of ferrous signals and copious amounts of lead fragments.
Lunchtime beckoned so we had a bite to eat before moving on to the denarii hoard field. We knew that we'd only part-cover this field today using our calculations.
We had marked the area where part of the hoard was found with a broom using reference data from the GPS co-ordinates from last December!
I know this may appear to be "high-tec" to some but we do like a reference point. The Lady of the Manor arrived on-site with their two dogs to see how we were getting on. She said that she looked forward to us calling in after the survey.
Apart from lots of green waste, Roman pottery and the first Roman coin (a large sestertius) made an appearance. Oddly enough, a couple of fragments of Medieval pottery and a small hammered coin of Edward Ist also came up.
As we came up against the "broom marker" the first denarius of the day was discovered. This was a denarius of Tiberius (Tribute penny 36 - 37 AD) and was in superb condition.
Two Roman brooches (a trumpet type and a tiny dolphin type), more large bronze coin denominations and small coins as well as a couple of Roman artefacts were found. Two pieces of raw yellow ochre were retrieved from the field surface. This was used as pigment for paint and colouring the enamel on Roman fibulae.
Another denarius was that of of Clodius Albinus (196 AD) but was entirely encrusted with hard-packed clay and copper leeching.
The culmination of events was the recovery of a triple-stacked stash of denarii that are certainly part of the December hoard.
We're hopefully seeing our local FLO this week to record the new additions to the original hoard. Another 6 denarii over the last seven days will bring the total to 15 as the current total.
As per usual we called in at the farmhouse to show the landowners the four cases of finds we'd recovered. Two cases held the Medieval finds and the other two held the Roman recoveries.
I asked if the gate would be left unlocked next week? (There are several locked gates on this Estate!!). With that, we were given a master key that unlocks all the gates on the Estate.
Everyone was so excited at the prospect of further finds that may be found as well as the upcoming professional archaeological survey that we've arranged to take place at some point in the not too distant future.
The archaeologists have arranged a meeting with the landowners to discuss what may happen and when.
We're hoping that, along with this and our British Museum presentation in Liverpool last week, we'll be able to improve the perception of metal-detectorists to the archaeological world and the general public.
Next week will be interesting as we'll survey the remainder of the field where the denarii hoard is situated.
Our estimates show that it will take at least 1.77 days to complete this field in its entirety! I think that next Sunday will be a full day with perhaps a day remaining to survey depending on how many stops we have!
A slight change to the instrumentation with one machine fitted with the standard 9" coil and the other with the 13" x 11" coil. GMP standard with tracking on one and manual on the other Déus.
For the full HD images of all the days finds please look here.
The plan for today was to complete the "Medieval" field and then make a start on the "Denarii Hoard Field", both of which are now seeded with winter wheat.
The Medieval field was seeded in a way that made it a challenge to cover it efficiently. The lines curved and twisted in all directions but we did manage to tame it and were sufficiently satisfied that we'd done it justice.
A cut-half and a half-penny along with several C14th buckles, strapends, belt mounts, a lovely beehive thimble and three Roman grots were recovered along with Medieval and Roman pottery.
The beehive thimble (first signal of the day) goes perfectly with the Medieval darning needle recovered last week.
The field was typical for a settlement area with hundreds of ferrous signals and copious amounts of lead fragments.
Lunchtime beckoned so we had a bite to eat before moving on to the denarii hoard field. We knew that we'd only part-cover this field today using our calculations.
We had marked the area where part of the hoard was found with a broom using reference data from the GPS co-ordinates from last December!
I know this may appear to be "high-tec" to some but we do like a reference point. The Lady of the Manor arrived on-site with their two dogs to see how we were getting on. She said that she looked forward to us calling in after the survey.
Apart from lots of green waste, Roman pottery and the first Roman coin (a large sestertius) made an appearance. Oddly enough, a couple of fragments of Medieval pottery and a small hammered coin of Edward Ist also came up.
As we came up against the "broom marker" the first denarius of the day was discovered. This was a denarius of Tiberius (Tribute penny 36 - 37 AD) and was in superb condition.
Two Roman brooches (a trumpet type and a tiny dolphin type), more large bronze coin denominations and small coins as well as a couple of Roman artefacts were found. Two pieces of raw yellow ochre were retrieved from the field surface. This was used as pigment for paint and colouring the enamel on Roman fibulae.
Another denarius was that of of Clodius Albinus (196 AD) but was entirely encrusted with hard-packed clay and copper leeching.
The culmination of events was the recovery of a triple-stacked stash of denarii that are certainly part of the December hoard.
We're hopefully seeing our local FLO this week to record the new additions to the original hoard. Another 6 denarii over the last seven days will bring the total to 15 as the current total.
As per usual we called in at the farmhouse to show the landowners the four cases of finds we'd recovered. Two cases held the Medieval finds and the other two held the Roman recoveries.
I asked if the gate would be left unlocked next week? (There are several locked gates on this Estate!!). With that, we were given a master key that unlocks all the gates on the Estate.
Everyone was so excited at the prospect of further finds that may be found as well as the upcoming professional archaeological survey that we've arranged to take place at some point in the not too distant future.
The archaeologists have arranged a meeting with the landowners to discuss what may happen and when.
We're hoping that, along with this and our British Museum presentation in Liverpool last week, we'll be able to improve the perception of metal-detectorists to the archaeological world and the general public.
Next week will be interesting as we'll survey the remainder of the field where the denarii hoard is situated.
Our estimates show that it will take at least 1.77 days to complete this field in its entirety! I think that next Sunday will be a full day with perhaps a day remaining to survey depending on how many stops we have!
A slight change to the instrumentation with one machine fitted with the standard 9" coil and the other with the 13" x 11" coil. GMP standard with tracking on one and manual on the other Déus.
For the full HD images of all the days finds please look here.
RSS Feed
