Priscan Archaeology
  • PA Home Page
  • PA Blogs
  • Meet The PA Team
  • PA Methodology & Techniques
  • The Badge of St Ursula
  • PA Milestones
  • Priscan Archaeological Treasures

Sunday 11th November 2018

12/11/2018

0 Comments

 
Remembrance Sunday, 100 years since the end of World War One.
My poppy was tucked away safely under layers of warm clothing.
Here we were, at a site that pre-dates WWI by at least 1700 years and wondered how the Iron Age people interacted with the invading Roman army.

The two (used to be three) fields we were going to explore had previously been deep ploughed for potatoes and were now rolled and drilled with Winter Wheat. We've had some great finds from 7 previous visits and we anticipated that this visit may be very productive. The last visit was January 2017.

The soil was slightly damp from the previous evenings rainfall so it was a little "sticky". This meant several attempts to shed the mud build-up on the wellies therefore wasting precious detecting time!

It was only a matter of a couple of minutes before the first Roman coin made an appearance. This was quite a welcome sign as there was also lots of modern metallic items lurking beneath the fields surface.
This was almost a similar situation to the green waste problem we've had as buttons and parts of watches are just as attractive as bits of MFI furniture fittings... not!

We pushed on and the horizon became very murky indeed.... and heading our way. Sure enough, it started drizzling and the hope was that it would pass. It did, but only to bring heavier rain with it.
We retreated to the vehicles which, when inside, made the rain sound even worse, as it does. Thankfully, this was only to last 15 minutes or so, and we could see that brighter weather was on its way. Thankfully, the soil wasn't any more sticky than it was before. 

Time-wise, we were up against it with lots of non-ferrous signals and constant mud slinging stopping us in our tracks. 
However, we still managed to recover 35 Roman coins with some lovely examples including a denarius of Hadrian and a siliqua of Constantius II. A denarius of Vespasian came up and was very similar to one we found very recently dating to 79 AD.
Oddly, we only found 2 Roman artefacts and these were only small items, one being a cosmetic implement and the other a fragment of a fibula with a trace of blue enamel showing.
Quite a few fragments of Roman pottery were recovered with one piece of Samian Ware depicting a hare being hunted. 
10 fragments of lead toys were found with at least 5 of them being soldiers which was quite poignant being that it was Armistice Day.
Another poignant find was the Leicester fretwork piece with thoughts of the tragic accident that happened recently at Leicester City's football ground.
Another surprise was a George III shilling dated 1817 in very good condition as well as a token from Dublin dating to 1876.
A rare Brass Workers Strike medallion saw the light of day too and this item is probably a story on its own.
A number of pre-decimal coins were found including; farthings, half-pennies, a penny and a Lizzy II sixpence.

The technical side of the day was that two 9" HF coils and one 13" X35 coil were under the control of standard GMP mode.
Most finds were within the first 5 inches of the field surface with the larger items being deeper, the deepest at 12".

High Definition images of all the finds can be seen here.

​





 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    April 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Home   Team   St Ursula   Artefacts  Blog