Sunday 25th January 2015

Well, it certainly doesn't feel like it was Christmas only a month ago!
This was yet another day that provided excellent weather for another outing with The PAST.

This survey was destined for a permission we call "Toy Soldier 3" or "TS3" for short.
We arrived at dawn with the temp at +2C and a very slight breeze.
As soon as we set foot onto the newly seeded field we knew that this could be trouble. The first signal after ten seconds on the field was a silvered Roman coin, just as the sun was rising.
A second Roman coin surfaced soon afterwards but, back to our initial concerns.... the field was very "claggy" so after ten minutes we decided to revert to Plan "B". This was the back-up plan to survey the permission next door which we have named "TS2".

The machines were set as last week, but this time with the small coils for a change.

On "TS2" we recovered some Roman and medieval pottery with Roman coins and lots of buttons and lead. A nice surprise was a Celtic button and loop fastener, although the loop was missing. A copper trade weight dating to the mid C16th with a wide range of other items were recovered.

We decided to give the initial survey area "TS3" another go. It was slightly better but still claggy. More Roman coins and some pottery was recovered. Again we decided it was still too soft to continue so it was back to "TS2"!!

A nice C1st Roman fibula complete with pin was recovered within minutes of returning to "TS2" 

We decided that we'd had enough toing and froing and threw in the towel and wound down the machines for the day.

The finds for the two survey areas can be seen here for TS3 and here  for finds recovered from TS2.