We visited a field we'd been to a year ago resulting in several recordable Roman artefacts and coins being recovered.
The field had been drilled with Spring Barley and was just showing at about two inches in height.
Unfortunately, the field had only been cultivated and not ploughed and this was reflected in the lack of finds.
We tried the field adjacent to the first one and this was exactly the same.
Cutting our losses, we decided to visit another permission of which all the fields had been drilled, some cultivated and the others ploughed.
The cultivator on this particular farm has been designed to disturb the soil up to a minimum of 8 inches.
The field we chose was indeed cultivated but we knew that there are lots of cut Medieval coins and small artefacts there. Also, this field has been the target of nighthawkers due to the high level of coinage there. The bad news is that most of the full coins and larger artefacts have been stolen over the years therefore leaving behind the smaller, harder to find items such as the cut-quarters etc.
The site was strewn with hundreds of fragments of Medieval pottery dating between the C12th and C14th centuries.
Nine Medieval coins were recovered along with some lovely artefacts from the same era. One of the buckles was zoomorphic and one we'd not seen before. Of the nine Medieval coins, only two were "full" coins, these being a half-penny and a farthing.
There is a very small Roman presence here too and this was in the form of a few Roman coins and 2 fibulae.
Two of the machines were fitted with the 9" HF coil using V5.2 with the third machine donning the 13" X35 coil and operating under V5.1.
The 13" X35 machine picked out all of the cut-quarters as well as three other hammered coins ending up with six Medieval coins! This is testament that the large coil will easily detect cut-quarters perhaps dispelling the myth that large coils "miss" small targets.
The remaining three hammered coins were picked out with the 9" HF coil.
Strangely, the third machine with the 9" HF coil (V5.2) didn't pick out any hammered coins! This is even though we surveyed in exactly the same way we do on every site, that is three-abreast, that part of the 18ft swathe didn't pass over any hammered coins at all.
When we reach the end of a pass, it is usually staggered, resulting in the return pass being in a totally different position! So, if I was on line 1 on the first pass, I might be on line two or three on the next one. This again shows that you've got to "walk over it" to find it.
High Definition images of all the finds on the day can be seen here.
The field had been drilled with Spring Barley and was just showing at about two inches in height.
Unfortunately, the field had only been cultivated and not ploughed and this was reflected in the lack of finds.
We tried the field adjacent to the first one and this was exactly the same.
Cutting our losses, we decided to visit another permission of which all the fields had been drilled, some cultivated and the others ploughed.
The cultivator on this particular farm has been designed to disturb the soil up to a minimum of 8 inches.
The field we chose was indeed cultivated but we knew that there are lots of cut Medieval coins and small artefacts there. Also, this field has been the target of nighthawkers due to the high level of coinage there. The bad news is that most of the full coins and larger artefacts have been stolen over the years therefore leaving behind the smaller, harder to find items such as the cut-quarters etc.
The site was strewn with hundreds of fragments of Medieval pottery dating between the C12th and C14th centuries.
Nine Medieval coins were recovered along with some lovely artefacts from the same era. One of the buckles was zoomorphic and one we'd not seen before. Of the nine Medieval coins, only two were "full" coins, these being a half-penny and a farthing.
There is a very small Roman presence here too and this was in the form of a few Roman coins and 2 fibulae.
Two of the machines were fitted with the 9" HF coil using V5.2 with the third machine donning the 13" X35 coil and operating under V5.1.
The 13" X35 machine picked out all of the cut-quarters as well as three other hammered coins ending up with six Medieval coins! This is testament that the large coil will easily detect cut-quarters perhaps dispelling the myth that large coils "miss" small targets.
The remaining three hammered coins were picked out with the 9" HF coil.
Strangely, the third machine with the 9" HF coil (V5.2) didn't pick out any hammered coins! This is even though we surveyed in exactly the same way we do on every site, that is three-abreast, that part of the 18ft swathe didn't pass over any hammered coins at all.
When we reach the end of a pass, it is usually staggered, resulting in the return pass being in a totally different position! So, if I was on line 1 on the first pass, I might be on line two or three on the next one. This again shows that you've got to "walk over it" to find it.
High Definition images of all the finds on the day can be seen here.
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