On the way to our latest permission "JHF1" we saw a herd of deer and a barn owl so wondered if this was an omen to good fortune? In the past (no pun) we've seen quite a few barn owls hunting and usually had a good day afterwards.
Anyway, here we were at our latest permission "JHF1" and yet another planned recce using the "Zebra" principle to cover the chosen three fields.
The first field had advanced OSR so that was the end of that survey!
The second field was 23-acres and drilled with spring wheat. The "Zebra" method proved a great success in checking the background history there which turned out to be very low. A small amount of green waste here but a Post Medieval dress hook and a fragment of C14th rim sherd were recovered. We won't be going back to this one!
The third field was badly contaminated with green waste!
Thats another field off the list that won't have a future survey.
With that, we decided instead to re-visit the 44 acre field that we recced last week.
This field is a "198 hour field" and we spent 6 hours there last week. This meant that we had another 192 hours to go to cover this 100%.
The field had just been seeded with spring barley and provided a fantastic opportunity to check for all surface finds as the photo below shows.
It wasn't long before the first Medieval artefacts came to light. These were mostly Medieval (C14th) buckles and strapend plates.
A couple of Roman coins emerged although not much pottery was found with only one piece of RB greyware and a few sherds of Medieval being recovered.
A denarius, a siliqua, a silvered Roman coin, three grots and a hammered coin were recovered. We spent 30 hours in this field so according to our calculations we have another 132 hours left!!!
We could see that some serious weather was on its way and with the sound of very angry thunder overhead, that was our cue to quit.
Just as the last piece of equipment was loaded into the support vehicle and the rear panels were shut the heavens opened - big style!!
The machines were set up with the 13" x 11" coils using the standard GMP mode and GB set to "Tracking".
Seeing it was 7:15pm we called into the local chippy for astounding fish n chips.......
Not sure where we'll be next weekend but I'm sure it will be interesting!
The images of the day's recoveries can be seen here.