It promised to be a damp day but we thought we'd risk it seeing that we'd already missed 7 surveys this season due to bad weather. The problem is that the land is so saturated that even if it'd been dry for a few days, there's still a huge amount of water contained in the land.
The landowner at our latest permission, JHF1, estimates that it may take a couple of months for the drains to revert to their normal levels.
Talking of latest permissions, we arrived at JHF1 just as daylight was breaking. We started on the field we were on last week in order to finish it off before moving on to other fields that we hadn't surveyed, as of yet.
Using our new 'Field Speed Formula' it was estimated that we'd finish the field by lunchtime .....and it was absolutely spot on!
I may post a separate article featuring this formula at a later date as it's a great way, and a fun way of accurately estimating how long it will take you to search any permission or field you have.
Anyway, back to today, we started off from where we left off last Saturday.
It wasn't long before the first pieces of C14th pottery were being retrieved from the field surface. Medieval artefacts and coinage soon followed!
In all, we recovered 7 Medieval coins, one of them being a superb example of a 'Stephen' Tealby penny. This was 45mm below the surface and one of the cut-halves was actually on the surface!
A fragment of a large Saxon brooch and a fantastic specimen of a Saxon zoomorphic brooch were also recovered. The zoomorphic brooch was at an eye-watering 5mm in depth!
A rare example of an Iron Age belt fitting with a "Celtic double-eyed" design was also recovered and is in superb condition complete with its loop.
More strapends came to light along with another silver gilded buckle too.
93 pieces of Medieval pottery, including 9 nice large fragments of jug handles, which were a pleasure to see, weighing in at 1.668kg were collected as well.
We discovered that the nighthawks had been in this particular part of the field as their pathetic attempts to dig were apparent. There were about 15 holes that hadn't been filled in.
It'll be funny when they return as there will be absolutely NOTHING left for them to thieve.
For the techno-minded, we used the large Déus coils, standard GMP mode with auto-tracking.
Using our 'Field Speed Formula' it estimates that it would take 339,258 large (13" x 11") coils to cover the field, or using the 9" coil the field it would accomodate 598,928 coils! Yes, nearly six hundred thousand coils! So those that think a field is "battered" may be interested in reading our "Estimating the Time to Search a Field" article that will follow soon.
Images of the days finds can be seen here:
The landowner at our latest permission, JHF1, estimates that it may take a couple of months for the drains to revert to their normal levels.
Talking of latest permissions, we arrived at JHF1 just as daylight was breaking. We started on the field we were on last week in order to finish it off before moving on to other fields that we hadn't surveyed, as of yet.
Using our new 'Field Speed Formula' it was estimated that we'd finish the field by lunchtime .....and it was absolutely spot on!
I may post a separate article featuring this formula at a later date as it's a great way, and a fun way of accurately estimating how long it will take you to search any permission or field you have.
Anyway, back to today, we started off from where we left off last Saturday.
It wasn't long before the first pieces of C14th pottery were being retrieved from the field surface. Medieval artefacts and coinage soon followed!
In all, we recovered 7 Medieval coins, one of them being a superb example of a 'Stephen' Tealby penny. This was 45mm below the surface and one of the cut-halves was actually on the surface!
A fragment of a large Saxon brooch and a fantastic specimen of a Saxon zoomorphic brooch were also recovered. The zoomorphic brooch was at an eye-watering 5mm in depth!
A rare example of an Iron Age belt fitting with a "Celtic double-eyed" design was also recovered and is in superb condition complete with its loop.
More strapends came to light along with another silver gilded buckle too.
93 pieces of Medieval pottery, including 9 nice large fragments of jug handles, which were a pleasure to see, weighing in at 1.668kg were collected as well.
We discovered that the nighthawks had been in this particular part of the field as their pathetic attempts to dig were apparent. There were about 15 holes that hadn't been filled in.
It'll be funny when they return as there will be absolutely NOTHING left for them to thieve.
For the techno-minded, we used the large Déus coils, standard GMP mode with auto-tracking.
Using our 'Field Speed Formula' it estimates that it would take 339,258 large (13" x 11") coils to cover the field, or using the 9" coil the field it would accomodate 598,928 coils! Yes, nearly six hundred thousand coils! So those that think a field is "battered" may be interested in reading our "Estimating the Time to Search a Field" article that will follow soon.
Images of the days finds can be seen here:
RSS Feed
