After a very misty journey the day brightened up to become quite warm, a balmy 23C!
We'd visited this field 2 weeks ago and covered 3-acres which produced the expected Medieval coinage and pottery that we'd recovered in past visits.
We were quite excited about searching this field again as it had been ploughed since our last full visit about a year previously.
We had a further 5-acres to survey and we thought that this could be achieved according to the formula we use to estimate field coverage.
Now for the boring technical bit.
Three different coils were used; a 9" HF, a 13" standard coil and the 13" X35 using standard settings.
There appeared to be a problem with the X35 coil as it was difficult to keep it stable and there was a moment in time where a change to the 9" HF coil was contemplated.
A drop in sensitivity from 90 to 78 seemed to calm things down but some small finds may have been missed during the first hour or so trying to get used to the amount of noise coming from the headphones. In hindsight I now realise that "good" signals will have been missed. As an example, the X35 coil only detected 16% of the total hammered coin finds using our usual strict search technique, even after changing the sensitivity back to the factory setting of 90.
Anyway, back to more 'exciting' things such as finding the 16 hammered coins, 1 siliqua of Valentinian II, a Medieval buckle that may have had it's origins in France and lots of C13th to C14th pottery.
If the siliqua is Valentinian II, there's quite an interesting story behind him.
One of the coins was attributed to 'John the Blind' kindly identified by Allectus on the MDF forum.
A lovely Medieval ring came up as well as a couple of worked flints.
I'm sure there'll be a challenge trying to ID the coins recovered!
HD images of all the finds can be seen here.
We'd visited this field 2 weeks ago and covered 3-acres which produced the expected Medieval coinage and pottery that we'd recovered in past visits.
We were quite excited about searching this field again as it had been ploughed since our last full visit about a year previously.
We had a further 5-acres to survey and we thought that this could be achieved according to the formula we use to estimate field coverage.
Now for the boring technical bit.
Three different coils were used; a 9" HF, a 13" standard coil and the 13" X35 using standard settings.
There appeared to be a problem with the X35 coil as it was difficult to keep it stable and there was a moment in time where a change to the 9" HF coil was contemplated.
A drop in sensitivity from 90 to 78 seemed to calm things down but some small finds may have been missed during the first hour or so trying to get used to the amount of noise coming from the headphones. In hindsight I now realise that "good" signals will have been missed. As an example, the X35 coil only detected 16% of the total hammered coin finds using our usual strict search technique, even after changing the sensitivity back to the factory setting of 90.
Anyway, back to more 'exciting' things such as finding the 16 hammered coins, 1 siliqua of Valentinian II, a Medieval buckle that may have had it's origins in France and lots of C13th to C14th pottery.
If the siliqua is Valentinian II, there's quite an interesting story behind him.
One of the coins was attributed to 'John the Blind' kindly identified by Allectus on the MDF forum.
A lovely Medieval ring came up as well as a couple of worked flints.
I'm sure there'll be a challenge trying to ID the coins recovered!
HD images of all the finds can be seen here.
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