As most detectorists know, finding sites that are dry and detectable are difficult to come by. Only a third of arable land has been drilled with crop.
We've relied upon archaeological digs to get out and about, although, this hasn't been a negative aspect entirely.
A call to a regular landowner gave us the info that some of his land had been 'worked'.
We arrived to find that the first field had been 'worked' but it was too soft and still rough in parts. We did give it a go but it was too much like hard work.
With that, we moved to a stubble field and moved on to yet another stubble field that was seeded with OSR. Not much was coming up and we ended up in a field where we found a hoard of Roman denarii.
A denarius of Augustus was the first denarius to emerge. Lots of Roman pottery lay on the surface and sure enough, three denarii came out of the same hole. They were denarii of Cato, Vespasian and Domitian.
The coins were covered in verdigris showing that were indeed in very close proximity to other coins from the hoard we found 4-years ago.
The field had been ploughed for the first time in 4 years.
This shows that ploughing is advantageous to realising maximum recovery rates. The metal-detecting club I was a member of seven-years ago said that detecting directly drilled land was not good at all for recovery rates.
They were so right, we've detected land that's not been ploughed and the find's rate dropped by at least 90% showing that to find that 'hidden' 10%, you'd have to live very nearby to make it worth the journey.
Some beautiful decorated Samian Ware came up as well as other Roman pottery. Over the day, some nice Medieval pottery and artefacts appeared as well.
A nice neolithic flint leaf blade was another great find adding to the montage of finds we recovered from one of our favourite sites
HD images of the day's finds can be seen here.
We've relied upon archaeological digs to get out and about, although, this hasn't been a negative aspect entirely.
A call to a regular landowner gave us the info that some of his land had been 'worked'.
We arrived to find that the first field had been 'worked' but it was too soft and still rough in parts. We did give it a go but it was too much like hard work.
With that, we moved to a stubble field and moved on to yet another stubble field that was seeded with OSR. Not much was coming up and we ended up in a field where we found a hoard of Roman denarii.
A denarius of Augustus was the first denarius to emerge. Lots of Roman pottery lay on the surface and sure enough, three denarii came out of the same hole. They were denarii of Cato, Vespasian and Domitian.
The coins were covered in verdigris showing that were indeed in very close proximity to other coins from the hoard we found 4-years ago.
The field had been ploughed for the first time in 4 years.
This shows that ploughing is advantageous to realising maximum recovery rates. The metal-detecting club I was a member of seven-years ago said that detecting directly drilled land was not good at all for recovery rates.
They were so right, we've detected land that's not been ploughed and the find's rate dropped by at least 90% showing that to find that 'hidden' 10%, you'd have to live very nearby to make it worth the journey.
Some beautiful decorated Samian Ware came up as well as other Roman pottery. Over the day, some nice Medieval pottery and artefacts appeared as well.
A nice neolithic flint leaf blade was another great find adding to the montage of finds we recovered from one of our favourite sites
HD images of the day's finds can be seen here.
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