A beautiful start to the day with wall-to-wall blue sky.
After a drive through the farm and the mile or so along the field edges we eventually arrived at our survey field.
The landowner arrived as we were "kitting up" and pointed out that there were three areas that he was going to have rolled and seeded over the next couple of weeks. He'd also just deep-ploughed a large field and planted potatoes there, that may be an interesting project for next year.
The machines were set up as last week with the 13" x 11" coils using the GMP mode in standard and GB using the "Tracking" mode. The "Tracking" was a little unstable for one of the team so manual was selected and set at "76" whilst keeping an eye on the "suggested" levels.
The first area of land we looked at was freshly cultivated so the soil was quite soft and aerated. This wasn't too much of a problem as a cut-half of Henry III was recovered as well as the head of a Roman headstud fibula which was a surface find.
Adjacent to this area was the second part of the survey area which was seeded with spring barley and very short in growth height.
A lovely complete gold guilded C13th brooch was one of the recoveries in this particular part of the survey field.
The finds were very difficult to pin down with no pottery evident, however, some nicely worked flint pieces were recovered from the field surface.
We decided that with the remaining few hours we had should be spent on an area we'd driven past on the way in that was now rolled and seeded.
This area has already had a quick scan a few weeks ago whilst it was cultivated but was too rough to survey effectively. Now we were looking at a lovely smooth carpet of green with the spring barley here just about showing through.
The first pass unearthed a medieval dress hook and a mix of Roman and medieval pottery. The next pass was quite extraordinary, one of the team said that it would be nice to end the day with a nice denarius and literally one step further a nice denarius of Septimius Severus was recovered. We all laughed at the timing of this and the next comment was ..."and a lovely Roman brooch would be nice too!". Sure enough, a superb silvered C2nd trumpet fibula complete with its pin was unearthed one hundred and sixty-seconds later!
A cut-quarter of Henry III was found followed by a half groat of Charles I.
The cut-quarter was another "life time first" for one of the team!
We knew that the day would be challenging and the results were as expected.
The next visit should see the team looking at the three areas that the landowner is seeding later with the possibility that a further visit may be needed to complete the task.
Images of the days' recoveries can be seen here.
After a drive through the farm and the mile or so along the field edges we eventually arrived at our survey field.
The landowner arrived as we were "kitting up" and pointed out that there were three areas that he was going to have rolled and seeded over the next couple of weeks. He'd also just deep-ploughed a large field and planted potatoes there, that may be an interesting project for next year.
The machines were set up as last week with the 13" x 11" coils using the GMP mode in standard and GB using the "Tracking" mode. The "Tracking" was a little unstable for one of the team so manual was selected and set at "76" whilst keeping an eye on the "suggested" levels.
The first area of land we looked at was freshly cultivated so the soil was quite soft and aerated. This wasn't too much of a problem as a cut-half of Henry III was recovered as well as the head of a Roman headstud fibula which was a surface find.
Adjacent to this area was the second part of the survey area which was seeded with spring barley and very short in growth height.
A lovely complete gold guilded C13th brooch was one of the recoveries in this particular part of the survey field.
The finds were very difficult to pin down with no pottery evident, however, some nicely worked flint pieces were recovered from the field surface.
We decided that with the remaining few hours we had should be spent on an area we'd driven past on the way in that was now rolled and seeded.
This area has already had a quick scan a few weeks ago whilst it was cultivated but was too rough to survey effectively. Now we were looking at a lovely smooth carpet of green with the spring barley here just about showing through.
The first pass unearthed a medieval dress hook and a mix of Roman and medieval pottery. The next pass was quite extraordinary, one of the team said that it would be nice to end the day with a nice denarius and literally one step further a nice denarius of Septimius Severus was recovered. We all laughed at the timing of this and the next comment was ..."and a lovely Roman brooch would be nice too!". Sure enough, a superb silvered C2nd trumpet fibula complete with its pin was unearthed one hundred and sixty-seconds later!
A cut-quarter of Henry III was found followed by a half groat of Charles I.
The cut-quarter was another "life time first" for one of the team!
We knew that the day would be challenging and the results were as expected.
The next visit should see the team looking at the three areas that the landowner is seeding later with the possibility that a further visit may be needed to complete the task.
Images of the days' recoveries can be seen here.
RSS Feed
