Remembrance Sunday, 100 years since the end of World War One.
My poppy was tucked away safely under layers of warm clothing.
Here we were, at a site that pre-dates WWI by at least 1700 years and wondered how the Iron Age people interacted with the invading Roman army.

The two (used to be three) fields we were going to explore had previously been deep ploughed for potatoes and were now rolled and drilled with Winter Wheat. We've had some great finds from 7 previous visits and we anticipated that this visit may be very productive. The last visit was January 2017.

The soil was slightly damp from the previous evenings rainfall so it was a little "sticky". This meant several attempts to shed the mud build-up on the wellies therefore wasting precious detecting time!

It was only a matter of a couple of minutes before the first Roman coin made an appearance. This was quite a welcome sign as there was also lots of modern metallic items lurking beneath the fields surface.
This was almost a similar situation to the green waste problem we've had as buttons and parts of watches are just as attractive as bits of MFI furniture fittings... not!

We pushed on and the horizon became very murky indeed.... and heading our way. Sure enough, it started drizzling and the hope was that it would pass. It did, but only to bring heavier rain with it.
We retreated to the vehicles which, when inside, made the rain sound even worse, as it does. Thankfully, this was only to last 15 minutes or so, and we could see that brighter weather was on its way. Thankfully, the soil wasn't any more sticky than it was before. 

Time-wise, we were up against it with lots of non-ferrous signals and constant mud slinging stopping us in our tracks. 
However, we still managed to recover 35 Roman coins with some lovely examples including a denarius of Hadrian and a siliqua of Constantius II. A denarius of Vespasian came up and was very similar to one we found very recently dating to 79 AD.
Oddly, we only found 2 Roman artefacts and these were only small items, one being a cosmetic implement and the other a fragment of a fibula with a trace of blue enamel showing.
Quite a few fragments of Roman pottery were recovered with one piece of Samian Ware depicting a hare being hunted. 
10 fragments of lead toys were found with at least 5 of them being soldiers which was quite poignant being that it was Armistice Day.
Another poignant find was the Leicester fretwork piece with thoughts of the tragic accident that happened recently at Leicester City's football ground.
Another surprise was a George III shilling dated 1817 in very good condition as well as a token from Dublin dating to 1876.
A rare Brass Workers Strike medallion saw the light of day too and this item is probably a story on its own.
A number of pre-decimal coins were found including; farthings, half-pennies, a penny and a Lizzy II sixpence.

The technical side of the day was that two 9" HF coils and one 13" X35 coil were under the control of standard GMP mode.
Most finds were within the first 5 inches of the field surface with the larger items being deeper, the deepest at 12".

High Definition images of all the finds can be seen here.

​





 

A bit of a dull, grey start to the day greeted us on our trip to a permission we visited a couple of weeks ago.
We arrived at 9am and unlocked the main gate with two more gates between us and the fields we were going to survey. 
​The first field has winter wheat which was just showing, the second field also had winter wheat with the third drilled with oil seed rape (OSR).

The first field had only been disked so we didn't expect too much from this visit. A setertius, a hammered penny and a fragment of a C2nd headstud brooch were the highlights here.

The second field had been ploughed and both this session and the last visit both proved testament that a field needs to be ploughed to produce the maximum amount of recoveries. A lot more pottery was also brought to the surface with some great examples to show for the effort.

We thought we'd pop over to field number three which has an area which we have labelled the "Shrine" spot.
The OSR was quite advanced making it pretty difficult to swing the coils, especially the 13" X35 coils. Nether-the-less, we still recovered 9 Roman coins in 10 minutes. This area will definitely be on our to-do list when it's re-ploughed next autumn!

With the challenge of the OSR beating us, we headed back to field #2 and recovered more Roman bronzes and pottery.
The landowners were out with their dogs and warmly greeted us with news of what's been going on at the Estate.
Another hour saw the dreaded drizzle coming in so we thought we'd finish off after having a so-so day. This wasn't bad news though as the early finish allowed us to have a look at another permission on the way home.
​The end result was 29 Roman coins, a fibula fragment, a hammered penny and lots of great Roman pottery!
​One of the images below shows how tiny some of the Roman coins are against something the size of sestertius or dupondius.

This permission has been out-bounds for over a year as it had potatoes in all three fields that cover a small Roman villa. This as you can imagine had been ploughed to its maximum depth!
You can also imagine our faces when we saw that all of it had been perfectly rolled and freshly drilled. We don't know with what yet as there was no sign of any shoots.

A quick email to the landowner with a super-fast response of "Hi Paul, yes, that would be fine". 
So, that's next weekend sorted.....weather permitting!

The technical bit was as it was last week although I did try a few new things just for the hell-of-it. I couldn't get used to the XY screen because I'm so used to checking out the mineralisation as I go using the 'normal' horse-shoe screen.
​
​Full HD images can be seen here.

Here's the account written by team member Robin Siddle:

British Museum; Commodus denarius donation to the national collection
 Visit October 2018
After finding my way to the upper floor of Greek and Roman life I was greeted by  Andrew Brown (National finds Advisor, Iron Age and Roman Coins) and  Richard Abdy (Curator of Roman and Iron Age coins.  
Upon entering a behind the scenes office area of the British museum I had a round the table meeting with Andrew, Richard and another member of their team. We began by having a discussion about Commodus and the coin that was being donated to the museum.  The paper work giving consent for the donation from myself and the landowners whose field the coin was found in was checked, copied and approved. Andrew explained that the museum were grateful for the donation particularly as this is a coin they don’t currently have in the national collection.  I explained that we were very happy to gift the coin to the museum and were excited about it being added to the collection. 
Richard nipped out of the meeting room for a minute and came back in with a tray of Commodus medallions, he then explained what they were used for and went into detail about the makeup of some of the medallions; one of particular interest was bimetallic, in a similar way to that of the modern two pound coins. I was passed on very large Roman military awarded medallion to hold which was brilliant, it was much heavier than I was expecting and not something I am likely to recover during a metal detecting survey.   
I was asked what period of coinage I was interested in and I explained my particular interest was in Roman coinage. I noted that we surveyed many sites of different periods producing various coinage and artefacts. I also mentioned that members of our survey team have an interest in the Saxon/early medieval period and that we are actively researching potential new sites.  Andrew noted that coin identification session are run at the BM looking at different period of Roman coinage and said that I would we welcome to attend.  
I explained that we had recently invited DigVentures to excavate a site where we had uncovered a small hoard of Vespasian denarii . Andrew was aware of DigVentures and the particular hoard I was referring to that was recorded through PAS. I mentioned that the site had gained  a lot of media coverage due to it being from an early period of occupation in the north of England. 

Using my IPad, I showed off the Priscan Image site using the Flickr platform and explained that after every survey, a detailed high resolution photographic report is produced of all notable finds. This information is then shared with the relevant landowners.  When scrolling down the photos, Andrew and Richard helped Identify a couple of recently found tricky to identify Roman coins, which will subsequently be recorded on PAS. Andrew also asked for a closer look at one find that we were unsure of, which was possible due to the close up shots that had been taken , he then  identified it as a fragment of  Belteus Decoration from a Roman military sword belt. This was very exciting to hear and something I am sure the landowner will be interested in.
Following the round the table discussion Andrew lead me down to the coin achieve.  It was pointed out to me where all the ancient Greek and Roman coins were housed. Andrew then located the section of Commodus coins and found the correct wooden tray where the newly donated denarius would be housed in perpetuity with similar reverse type coins.  The differences between some of the reverse types of the Commodus denarii was explained to me in detail.  Andrew then proceeded to pick out trays of Roman coins for me to examine and handle including coins from all periods. I was passed coins of all different types from gold Aureus to Sestertius which was fascinating. I was lucky enough to be trusted to handle a famous coin of Titus with a Colosseum type reverse which really made the day special as this is a coin I have read a lot about and not been fortunate to see first-hand let alone handle.

Richard was busy printing the new a coin label and added the donated denarius on to the BM’s database. I was then shown the new label, (with my name on it) and then it was placed on the coin tray along with the denarius ready for archiving.
My day at the museum then concluded with a walk around the public display areas of the museum.     

Today's survey was a visit to two fields that are side-by-side, one was 'worked' and the other ploughed.
The worked field has produced several denarii, a few fibulae and pottery including Samian Ware. An area where a denarii hoard was located was chosen to see if the working had disturbed any more denarii there.

A Roman trumpet fibula dating to the C2nd was recovered then the first denarius from the original hoard spot was detected. The emperor on the coin was Vespasian (69 - 79 AD) and had a copper green deposit adhered to its surface. The same deposit was also evident on a majority of the hoard coins too. 
A second denarius of Vespasian in the same area of the first coin was recovered and again, this had the copper deposit upon it.
Quite a few small sherds of Samian Ware were collected near to the denarii.
Nothing else was found in the large area searched surrounding the hoard site so we decided to move over to the ploughed field.

The second field was drilled with wheat and the shoots were about 3 inches long so the view of the surface was fairly good. This helped in the recovery of several sherds of Roman pottery with some very large pieces of rim sherd being found. Oyster shell and a Devils Toenail were also found on the field surface.
Part-way through the survey we saw footprints coming from the side of the field and back again. These were at 90 degree's to the field edge and looked as though whoever it was were using a wild bird crop cover to hide in if disturbed. Quite a few holes had been dug and some still had the greenwaste left in the holes.

Whoever the nighthawker was, he did a very amateurish job at searching the field as we found lots of Roman grots near to their footprints as well as a Roman brooch complete with its pin! He'd also missed a bronze numus of Allectus which was in fairly good condition. A siliqua of Valens and another denarius, this time it was that of Trajan,were also recovered in this area.
Our thoughts are that the nighthawker has been coming for years as they knew that this area was a particular "hot-spot". Imagine what must have stolen over the years!

Now for the technical bit.
Two machines were used, both running V5.2 and standard GMP mode with one machine fitted with the 9" HF coil and the other, the 13" X35 coil. 
Last week the 9" HF coil didn't find any of the 9 hammered Medieval coins compared to the 13" X35 machines which found all of them. The X35 machines also found the majority of the artefacts too.
This week it was the other way around where the 9" HF set-up found far more than the 13" X35..... again, this shows that you've got to walk over it and, as we use parallel lines, side-by-side, the soil conditions are the same so we can't use that excuse either. We also swapped lines regularly so the two of us were never on the same return leg of the field.
We are extremely comfortable with the end result of a survey as umpteen times now, one may find lots and the other two not as much or two will find lots and the third member nothing! Again, it proves that you have to walk over it!
A perfect example of this was that the X35 machine found the first 5 Roman bronze coins then, all of a sudden, the HF machine started to find coins and tripled the amount of Roman bronzes. The HF machine also recovered both Roman fibulae!

​HD images of the finds on the day can be seen here.

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.

And what a day it was too! Our first permission didn't turn out the way we expected with only a few Roman items being recovered. It was decided to abandon this site, which used to be one of our top venues, moving on to another permission.
The second permission is mainly Medieval and has only just been drilled after being worked, but not ploughed. Even so, we thought it may be worthwhile as we've recovered several cut hammered and other artefacts here in the past. Our thoughts are that there may have been some form of trading at the edge of the DMV. Finding lots of cut coinage in a particular area is a very good indicator that trading was going on there.

Sure enough, the first coinage started to appear as well as hundreds of fragments of Medieval pottery. Some lovely artefacts were also recovered.

​The full report will follow shortly, along with images from the day.

It's quite amusing that, after all the advice we've given, people still doubt the ability of their metal-detectors and the programs installed upon them.
​
The scenario is quite simple, if you can't hear it...... it's not there.
Adopting this ethos should remove all insecurities and therefore allow the detectorist to fully enjoy their day out in the beautiful British countryside.

Ignoring the above ethos results in purchasing several machines or constantly changing/tweaking machine programs that have been created by machine experts.
This is just chasing the dream!

So, don't worry, if you're not finding that elusive hammie whammie, it's not there, simples!

After using the same machine for over 7 years and using the latest upgrades, I've never lost faith in the machines performance.
The same goes for the rest of the team, they are fully satisfied with the performance of the Déus, the HF coils and the new X35 coils using the V5.2 software.

Having this belief in our machines allows us to survey areas with full confidence, therefore allowing us to cover ground without loss of time.

This is the result of using the Déus over 7 years....... Results

How time flies! I can't believe that DigNation has finally arrived after booking the tickets last December. It was also an opportunity to meet up with the DigVentures crew after a very successful dig last month when they uncovered a possible C1st Roman villa.
We weren't sure how the weekend would turn out as we had so much on with a new possible permission to visit, a survey around the trenches and of course, the lectures too.

I did wonder if we would see any of the Time Team guys "up close and personal"...... ironically, we ended up drinking with them in the local pub as well as in the green room attached to the lecture theatre.
This was so surreal...... actually chatting to all of the surviving Time Team members that attended the Mick Aston tribute on Lindisfarne in a totally relaxed and open way.
Rob and I spent an hour sat chatting to Phil Harding in the pub and then Francis Pryor, Stewart Ainsworth, John Gater, Helen Geake, Carenza Lewis, the executive producers and all the support crew that helped create Time Team as we saw it.

Meanwhile, we called in to a farm we'd researched for a possible new permission and met up with the landowner. He was so kind and accommodating, he said help yourselves! The field was cultivated stubble but the soil was quite soft and fluffy. It started off well with a Roman brooch appearing in the second signal, unfortunately nothing else was recovered, probably as a result of the soil conditions.

​We made our way to The Holy Island of Lindisfarne to see what areas DigVentures wanted us to survey. We started on the soil heaps and were excited to find two hammered coin; an Elizabethan sixpence in fair condition and a heavily clipped shilling of James Ist.

Part of the DigNation gig was a Saturday night party that involved an inflatable pub, a live performance in the lecture hall and, of course, more trips to the local pub! It was so strange seeing your Time Team icons all over the place and well up for a chat.

The climax of the weekend was a private party on Sunday night at the DigVentures house with members of Time Team enjoying the free flowing bar too! Can't believe I was sat on a bean bag with Helen Geake and discussing LiDAR and other techniques with Stewart Ainsworth! John Gator was also on-hand for topical discussion.

As we were leaving the campsite I learnt that the farm had 600-acres, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask.......

So, that was it, two new permissions, two hammered coins, two days of pure hallucination and two days of meeting new friends, contacts and of course.... the Time Team members in the flesh and in a situation that is totally surreal.

​The next few weeks are going to be interesting as we've met a young lady who's heavily involved with the young farmers association and has lots of contacts with landowners. This is going to flow nicely with our quest for adding potential new permissions to the exhausted sites we have.

We're so excited for the 2018 - 2019 season.
Hopefully, we can guide other members to a more fruitful future in detecting.

​ 

Apart from our jaunt around the English countryside the other week, this was our very first survey of the 2018 - 2019 season.
This is a brand new permission that we came across during that trip.
The landowner said that we could have a look there and then but we had other landowners to see. Rob however decided we should have a look and see what happens.
The field was rolled but had lots of huge voids as the soil was quite dry and solid. Surprisingly we found a cut-half and a denarius of Vespasian in the hour we spent there so it looked to be promising.

We arrived at 8am and the weather was overcast with a southerly breeze but the forecast was said to stay dry.
The field had now been seeded with Oil Seed Rape (OSR) and was flat as a pancake and with no gaping voids at all. The soil was extremely dry and quite powdery although solid enough to give us confidence that depth wont be a problem.

The field was quite large (26-acres) so we had no chance of covering it all but we thought we'd give it our best shot.
This involved the use of our tried and trusted "Zebra" search pattern and this resulted in us quickly finding areas rich in signals and surface finds.

Once we were satisfied where to start, we tightened up our search pattern and it wasn't long before we started to recover lots of Medieval pottery, artefacts and coinage.

In all, we recovered 11 Medieval hammered coins, a bronze stater, 6 Roman coins, several Medieval buckles; one of them zoomorphic, a Medieval casket key, spindle whorls, a Medieval thimble, Medieval skillet fragments, 98 fragments of Medieval pottery with 12 jug handles, Medieval belt mounts and fossils.
The Medieval coinage covered 9 different rulers! There was also a ferrous item that looks to be either a blade or spear as lots of Medieval horse shoes were found too. We were extremely lucky to recover 2 groats (one being Queen Mary Ist) 
One item of interest was the base of a bottle with the name P Naide and a date of 1721 below it. Other modern items were a Gin bottle adornment, a cap badge, an aluminium bird ring, 2 ship halfpennies; one was in decent condition, the other badly corroded.

 Two 13" X35 coils, one using V5.1, the other V5.2 and the third coil; the 9" HF coil flashed to V5.1. The programs used were GMP for the main part of the day with FAST on the extremely busy ferrous area and a quick blast on HOT just to see how it coped.
One of the V5.2 13" coils was set to TRACKING on all programs and and this setup was extremely successful in recovering a wide range of the finds on the day. This of course could have been luck, but on the whole, all three machines performed brilliantly.

​High Definition images of all the finds can be seen here.

There was however a downside to the day, the landowner came over to chat to us and said "glad you're enjoying yourselves, I'll give you a ring next year when I've re-ploughed it and you can come back".
So, now we have to wait until September 2019 before we can return LOL!

​

We're off to Lindisfarne on Friday for a long weekend enjoying "DigNation" hosted by DigVentures.
During Saturday and Sunday there will be several talks by lots of archaeologists and members of The Time Team including Sir Tony Robinson, Mick Aston, Dr David Petts, Professor Carenza Lewis, Francis Pryor MBE, Dr Helen Geake and presenter Dan Snow to name a few.

It will be great to meet and chat with the Time Team members and get their views on how metal-detecting has moved on since the 1970's.

It will also be a great chance to display our metal-detecting experience and expertise with all the archaeologists and Time Team members.

Whilst up in the wilds of Northumbria, we plan to call in on potentially what may be a new permission.

I'm sure the weekend will be a blast, hopefully not from Storm Ali that's passing through Northern Britain at the moment!

We'll keep you posted and get back to you early next week.