Just before we made a start on our target field, we paid a visit to a permission nearby to check the field conditions there. All three fields had been deeply ploughed to at least 12 inches which left 2ft furrows and consequently, the potato planting was now in full progress.
This bodes well for when the next wheat crop is drilled later this year or early 2019.
Back to the target field; we made progress down the eastern side of the field and found the conditions to be very crumbly and dry.
The temperature was already beginning to soar and the first of 28 Roman coins began to emerge. Most were "grots" but this field does throw up some superb examples, as we saw last week with the fantastically detailed follis of Crispus coming up.
A tractor arrived after an hour and started to power-harrow the remainder of the field alongside where we were detecting. This made the field even flatter than it was before, although quite soft and aerated.
We were then joined by two other detectorists but they didn't appear to be sticking to any planned or structured search pattern. At one point they were 150 metres apart and were travelling in different directions to each other.
It wasn't too long before one of them came alongside us and started to chat about our machines and settings we were using as they were both using a different brand of detector.
They stayed for three hours and found a total of 3 Roman grots. What was amazing is that one was walking at a brief pace using full-sized steps whilst the other chap was "pendulum" swinging with the coil at least 10" above the ground at the end of each swing.
It just shows that even with this method of searching, it can still result in the recovery of finds!
Apart from the 28 Roman coins/grots, the artefacts we managed to recover were as follows; a nice Roman fantail fibula with red and blue enamel still evident, a large Roman finger ring, a coiled Roman finger ring, a Roman buckle, a Roman pin, a Roman connecting link, 3 lead spindle whorls/weights, a George III sixpence, a Dutch one-cent piece dating to 1881, Medieval strapends, a Rose farthing, a cartwheel penny and a few pieces of Roman pottery.
As last week, the 13" coil and two 9" HF coils were used in the standard GMP mode. One of the 9" coils were set at 75 on the Manual GB setting.
All signals were strong and confident with no "iffy" signals at all.
Even the tiniest of minims were found with ease along with tiny pieces of lead too.
High Definition images can be seen here.