We arrived at one of our fave permissions after passing through some wet weather en-route.
The field we targeted was one where we part-surveyed recently and was drilled with winter wheat.
We also thought we'd have a quick recce on a roughly ploughed field that has a very high chance of having a small villa there.
This time around we found very little in metallic finds but what we did find wasn't too bad with a fragment of a dragonesque brooch, a Roman or Iron Age fitting, three Roman coins and a couple of Medieval strapends.
Six pieces of flint were recovered with two of them being nice blades dating to about 2500 BC.
The first field was very hard going, both in finds and extremely claggy soil that was sticking everywhere!
We decided to pay a visit to a landowner nearby and see if we could gain permission there, so we left one of the team to recce the rough ploughed field whilst the other two had a jolly and went to see the new contender.
After a short while we managed to track him down, thanks to the assistance of two lovely young ladies that both tried to ringing him to see which part of the farm he was tending.
He appeared in a stable doorway and guardedly asked what we wanted.
Luckily enough, someone that one of the team knows had spoken to him to let him know we may be calling in.
"Ahhh... yes, he mentioned you may drop by, we already have a detectorist that has been coming for years".
We showed him a map of the field and he said that the detectorist had found coins and brooches there.
We asked if we could have the last hour of sunlight there and he said yes.
He gave us his mobile number just in case we needed to contact him.
With that, we jumped back into the truck and drove back to collect Robin from the rough ploughed field at the other permission.
We saw him at the far end of the field and radioed him to come back as we were going to the new permission.
It took for what seemed like forever for Robin to travel across the field back to where we'd parked!
He did however have further evidence of the suspected Roman villa in the form of more tesserae.
We parked up at the 75-acre stubble field with mixed feelings and as we were tuning the machines we could see Roman grey ware in between the wheat chaff.
Sure enough, the first Roman coin was detected followed by six more along with seventeen fragments of mixed Roman pottery.
There was one fragment of C13th recovered amongst the Roman pottery.
A William III halfpenny 1697 was also found, so it bodes well for this field as it has already been searched by the other detectorist that also has permission to detect here.
We asked the landowner if it was okay to return next weekend to which he said yes.
We elected to use two 9" HF coils and one 9" standard coil, all set to the GMP mode and, as usual, all the finds were within 4 inches of the field surface with some only millimetres deep.
High Definition images from both dig sites can be seen here and here.
The field we targeted was one where we part-surveyed recently and was drilled with winter wheat.
We also thought we'd have a quick recce on a roughly ploughed field that has a very high chance of having a small villa there.
This time around we found very little in metallic finds but what we did find wasn't too bad with a fragment of a dragonesque brooch, a Roman or Iron Age fitting, three Roman coins and a couple of Medieval strapends.
Six pieces of flint were recovered with two of them being nice blades dating to about 2500 BC.
The first field was very hard going, both in finds and extremely claggy soil that was sticking everywhere!
We decided to pay a visit to a landowner nearby and see if we could gain permission there, so we left one of the team to recce the rough ploughed field whilst the other two had a jolly and went to see the new contender.
After a short while we managed to track him down, thanks to the assistance of two lovely young ladies that both tried to ringing him to see which part of the farm he was tending.
He appeared in a stable doorway and guardedly asked what we wanted.
Luckily enough, someone that one of the team knows had spoken to him to let him know we may be calling in.
"Ahhh... yes, he mentioned you may drop by, we already have a detectorist that has been coming for years".
We showed him a map of the field and he said that the detectorist had found coins and brooches there.
We asked if we could have the last hour of sunlight there and he said yes.
He gave us his mobile number just in case we needed to contact him.
With that, we jumped back into the truck and drove back to collect Robin from the rough ploughed field at the other permission.
We saw him at the far end of the field and radioed him to come back as we were going to the new permission.
It took for what seemed like forever for Robin to travel across the field back to where we'd parked!
He did however have further evidence of the suspected Roman villa in the form of more tesserae.
We parked up at the 75-acre stubble field with mixed feelings and as we were tuning the machines we could see Roman grey ware in between the wheat chaff.
Sure enough, the first Roman coin was detected followed by six more along with seventeen fragments of mixed Roman pottery.
There was one fragment of C13th recovered amongst the Roman pottery.
A William III halfpenny 1697 was also found, so it bodes well for this field as it has already been searched by the other detectorist that also has permission to detect here.
We asked the landowner if it was okay to return next weekend to which he said yes.
We elected to use two 9" HF coils and one 9" standard coil, all set to the GMP mode and, as usual, all the finds were within 4 inches of the field surface with some only millimetres deep.
High Definition images from both dig sites can be seen here and here.
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