This weekend was going to be a tester for our first outing in the campervan and the possibility of trying two new permissions.
The camper may help in cutting down driving time and fuel bills by being able to visit a site/s over two days.
Our first port of call was to a site that has produced several Medieval coins and artefacts on the first two visits back in 2013.
The third visit two tears ago only produced a small amount of artefacts and the conclusion was that it hadn't been ploughed, it had in fact been drilled directly.
This latest visit was the fourth to the 4-acre wheat field which had just been harvested, with the straw still laid in rows, of which we used as lanes to follow. This meant that 50% of the field was covered in straw and 95% of the field surface was concealed with wheat chaff.
After three-and-a-half hours between the three of us, we only recovered two hammered coins, one C13th buckle and two Medieval jug handles.
As a benchmark, this field produced THREE Sainsbury's carrier bags full of Medieval pottery from just one visit in 2013!
The conclusion was that the field had again only been cultivated and not ploughed.
We're hopefully calling in next week to have a chat with the landowner to ask if it is going to be ploughed or not. If it's being drilled directly again, we'll be giving it a miss for a couple of years.
After lunch we decided to try a new permission that we suspected may be a Roman settlement.
We arrived and met with the landowner who said that metal-detectorists have been coming for 25 years. He said that lots of Roman coins, brooches and some denarii had been found. The field we were interested in was next door to the "detected" field and was claimed to be un-detected.
The three of us spent FOUR hours and covered most of the field with only 5 Roman coins to show. We could tell that, due to the lack of lead and large signals, this field had also been detected for at least 25 years.
We called it a day and wondered what the plan was for the next day.
Oddly enough, the next trip was to some pasture on a permission we were searching the other week. We didn't find much other than modern coinage and rubbish.
Another site was required ....so we travelled to our fourth permission in two days which was on wheat stubble.
This produced more Roman coins and lots of modern items.
This site covers the corner of a Roman settlement which we discovered a couple of years ago.
The settlement runs into our fifth permission of the weekend which is just next door.
We know that the stubble on permission 5 is the result of direct drilling so we were confident that we wouldn't find much.
Sure enough, no finds were recovered from the areas that we had surveyed when the field was ploughed the year before.
This shows that the land had not compacted to any degree, therefore not producing any more finds/signals.
We are now hoping that this field is ploughed this year and may produce more Roman artefacts and coins?
We are confident that if you're not getting many signals it is purely down to the simple fact that there isn't anything there within range.
The examples above show that if a field has been covered for 25 years, or it's been surveyed efficiently and not re-ploughed, the recovery rate will be severely reduced to a bare minimum.
I've read a few posts written by detectorists, some very recently, that are doubting their ability or machine. There is no need to be concerned, simply believe in your machine as it will find targets that are within the range of the coil.
If there's a cut-quarter on its edge, then so be it. All the other targets won't be on their edges as well!
We'll be writing an article shortly supporting the two previous paragraphs.
This will show just how effective efficient coverage can be, and that any doubts about ability or machine capability should diminish completely.
High Definition images can be viewed on the following three links:
Here, here and here.
The camper may help in cutting down driving time and fuel bills by being able to visit a site/s over two days.
Our first port of call was to a site that has produced several Medieval coins and artefacts on the first two visits back in 2013.
The third visit two tears ago only produced a small amount of artefacts and the conclusion was that it hadn't been ploughed, it had in fact been drilled directly.
This latest visit was the fourth to the 4-acre wheat field which had just been harvested, with the straw still laid in rows, of which we used as lanes to follow. This meant that 50% of the field was covered in straw and 95% of the field surface was concealed with wheat chaff.
After three-and-a-half hours between the three of us, we only recovered two hammered coins, one C13th buckle and two Medieval jug handles.
As a benchmark, this field produced THREE Sainsbury's carrier bags full of Medieval pottery from just one visit in 2013!
The conclusion was that the field had again only been cultivated and not ploughed.
We're hopefully calling in next week to have a chat with the landowner to ask if it is going to be ploughed or not. If it's being drilled directly again, we'll be giving it a miss for a couple of years.
After lunch we decided to try a new permission that we suspected may be a Roman settlement.
We arrived and met with the landowner who said that metal-detectorists have been coming for 25 years. He said that lots of Roman coins, brooches and some denarii had been found. The field we were interested in was next door to the "detected" field and was claimed to be un-detected.
The three of us spent FOUR hours and covered most of the field with only 5 Roman coins to show. We could tell that, due to the lack of lead and large signals, this field had also been detected for at least 25 years.
We called it a day and wondered what the plan was for the next day.
Oddly enough, the next trip was to some pasture on a permission we were searching the other week. We didn't find much other than modern coinage and rubbish.
Another site was required ....so we travelled to our fourth permission in two days which was on wheat stubble.
This produced more Roman coins and lots of modern items.
This site covers the corner of a Roman settlement which we discovered a couple of years ago.
The settlement runs into our fifth permission of the weekend which is just next door.
We know that the stubble on permission 5 is the result of direct drilling so we were confident that we wouldn't find much.
Sure enough, no finds were recovered from the areas that we had surveyed when the field was ploughed the year before.
This shows that the land had not compacted to any degree, therefore not producing any more finds/signals.
We are now hoping that this field is ploughed this year and may produce more Roman artefacts and coins?
We are confident that if you're not getting many signals it is purely down to the simple fact that there isn't anything there within range.
The examples above show that if a field has been covered for 25 years, or it's been surveyed efficiently and not re-ploughed, the recovery rate will be severely reduced to a bare minimum.
I've read a few posts written by detectorists, some very recently, that are doubting their ability or machine. There is no need to be concerned, simply believe in your machine as it will find targets that are within the range of the coil.
If there's a cut-quarter on its edge, then so be it. All the other targets won't be on their edges as well!
We'll be writing an article shortly supporting the two previous paragraphs.
This will show just how effective efficient coverage can be, and that any doubts about ability or machine capability should diminish completely.
High Definition images can be viewed on the following three links:
Here, here and here.
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