It was a damp start as predicted with mist and a little drizzle on the first field of the day. This was the field that we were rained-off from last weekend. We're not complaining though as this was our 27th outing this season which was far better than the year before!
With very little being found both ceramic and metallic (one hammered and a small seal matrix) we decided to move on.
We had the choice of two pasture fields that we've never searched, or to test the theory of "soil compaction" on a 8.5 acre stubble field we last surveyed in April 2016 when it was freshly drilled with winter wheat.
22 hammered coins and a large amount of Medieval pottery were recovered on those two visits last year.
An odd sight was a hare that was crouched down in front of us no more than 4 feet away! We'd seen two boxing earlier and this was one of them.
We elected to go for the stubble field as we could cover the pasture fields anytime between May and August.
It wasn't long before the first of 9 hammered coins (dating from C12th onward) began to show as well as more pieces of C13th - C14th pottery with their customary green glaze. Lots of lead and a lead seal matrix along with several lead pistol shot were found. A rare find was a lead champagne seal from the famous French champagne house of Roedere. Just as odd was a bottle top from the Derwent Brewery (Russells) in Malton as we were nowhere near that area! Another nice find was a zoomorphic strapend that could be Saxon/Viking or Early Medieval.
Some of the field had been disked and three hammered coins came from this area. Amazingly, a couple of the hammered were found in the solid stubble ground were recovered within 5mm of the field surface showing that 100% coverage wasn't achieved last time around. As it was, we only covered a third of the field this time around.
It just goes to show that if you don't overlap your swing you will miss small metallic items at the outer limits of your swing arc.
To date, 31 hammered coins have been recovered from this field in 3 visits.
This area appears to have been used as a temporary low-key market site with coins covering a wide time span, C12th to C16th as well as the usual casual Georgian losses etc.
We called it a day at 4:30 and called in to see the landowners as we hadn't seen them for a few weeks.
We caught up with several items on the agenda, hopefully we can report on some of these items in the not too distant future......
High definition images of the days finds can be seen here.
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