Our 15th outing since August 2018 saw us revisit our latest new permission.
Although we haven't been out as much as we'd like, our recording is still on par.

Unfortunately, one of the team had serious man-flu and couldn't make it this weekend so we were down to a 66% team capacity.
Fortunately, we had a good mobile 'phone signal so that we could keep our missing team member in-the-loop thus preventing any kind of anxiety.

The weather was extremely kind and as you may have seen from our last posting, the sandy soil conditions were superb.
This time around, we were able to apply more time to the fields right next to the thirteenth century village church.

The field we chose was directly drilled OSR on wheat stubble but the OSR has been completely decimated leaving the field resembling a normal looking wheat stubble field. However, the stubble was completely flattened and didn't pose any kind of problem.

Oh WOW!, we've never seen so many musket balls and giant fragments of lead! 81 musket balls of various sizes were extracted weighing 726 grams in total. Some of the lead pieces were huge so the field can't have been seriously detected before. Images of these humongous lead fragments and musket balls can be seen along with all the other recoveries on our Flickr site as usual.
Lots of Medieval pottery came to light as well as Medieval artefacts in the form of coins and metallic objects.
The hammered coins are of John, his son; Henry III and a Queen Elizabeth I London penny. A lovely decorated spindle whorl (one of my fave finds) was recovered as well as other copper-alloy Medieval items.
Strange but true, one of the team had never found a Gothic styled florin but managed to find two! A love token in the form of a Queen Anne sixpence c.1705 was another unusual recovery.

The weather was so good that we committed the drone to the skies. Hopefully that footage will be available soon.

Whilst we were there, a chap approached us and asked if we'd found anything. He then proceeded to fill us in with the local history which was fascinating. What was even more fascinating was that he was friends with a major landowner there. He then hit the hot-spot for me.... he was an expert birdwatcher, this opened the floodgates for me to relate all things ornithologically. He mentioned that a juvenile peregrine falcon was picking off the resident wood pigeon population. Also, which is even rarer, a small flock of firecrest were flitting about the Estate grounds!

On our way out we met up again with the resident birdwatcher and he gave us the address of a local farmer that has some interesting land nearby.

Machine settings used were standard GMP mode using the 9" HF coils.
Some of the finds came up from over 12 inches due to the size of some of the lead objects. 

As always, the HD images of the days recoveries can be seen here.

Despite all sorts of weather warnings, we still decided to venture out onto this brand new permission with wheat stubble.
The research showed that there may be evidence of Roman or Medieval activity.

The weather was okay when we arrived at 11am.
The stubble was very soft and the soil was fantastic, being quite sandy.
What a change it was not to have spades, wellingtons and pin-pointers covered in sticky mud!
Only 4 Roman coins were recovered with only 2 of them identifiable.
We couldn't see any pottery as we only had about 5% visibility of the field surface.

Our challenge to identify who may have inhabited the field was partly solved and looks to have been a small Roman settlement with perhaps just one dwelling that was there for a short period of time.
Another survey when the field is drilled with wheat/barley may provide further evidence to either support this theory or otherwise.
We decided to ask the landowner if we could have a look at another field about 2 miles away so I sent him a quick text whilst he was out on a shoot.
The answer came back within 2 minutes and it was "Fine, go ahead".

This field was right next to a rebuilt Victorian church on top of a C12th building and the soil was just like the first field, lovely!
The first signal was a corroded Roman coin quickly followed by an Early Medieval buckle dating to C11th and was a "Beast Biting the Bar" type.
Other Medieval artefacts were recovered along with Medieval pottery.
Quite a few modern items were also found as there was quite a lot of Victorian night soil tippings evident.

​HD images of the finds can be seen here.

Where did last year go?!

Here we were at a brand new permission that held the promise that there may be Roman evidence lurking just inches below the surface.

It was just coming light as we donned the gear and machinery.
On entering the field we saw that is was a very sandy mix and a very welcome situation compared to last week when we were plagued with the sticky mud! This type of soil is beautiful to dig as some of you may know.

After a couple of minutes a vehicle pulled up and a chap got out and shouted over "excuse me" so I went over to introduce myself.
He asked if we had permission to be on the field to which I said yes.
He then said "who did we ask?" so I informed him and he said that the lady in question should have refused as the field was rented out to another farmer, Mr X.
He added "Mr X wouldn't like the fact that you're digging up his crop" to which I replied that we have several landowners that thoroughly trust us and are happy that there is minimal damage to crops.
He also asked if we'd spoken to Mr X and I said no, he repeated the he wouldn't be happy and that he pays a lot of money to rent the field.
He drove off and we decided to continue but with a dark cloud hanging over us.

We managed to find two Roman trumpet brooches and nothing more so Rob launched his new toy to film the field from some great angles. The hexacopter climbed to a height of 70 metres.
Funnily enough, the damage to the crops from rabbits and pigeons was quite bad.

We had a bite to eat at noon and decided to call it a day and call in and see Mrs X that gave us permission. Unfortunately she was out so I rang her mobile and she said she was sorry for the misunderstanding. We had a laugh about it and I said I would ring her again regarding other fields they have.

Our next port of call was a stalwart permission that has produced some brilliant finds. Unfortunately the field was roughly ploughed so out-of-bounds. Plan C was called for so a quick 'WhatsApp' message to another landowner and we were on our way to a Roman field we hadn't been to since September 2017.

The field had been seeded with Winter Wheat and was quite short and the soil quite dry, so no claggy wellingtons!
After lots of buttons we managed to recover three denarii and a few grots.
The denarii appear to be Diva Faustina I with the other two being Vespasian and possibly Vitellius, Vespasian's' predecessor.
A coin we hadn't found before was a silver schilling dating to 1790.

Once again, Robs hexacopter took to the air to capture some shots that will be great to see when uploaded to the video channel.
This time, the drone maintained a height of 120 metres so that footage will be interesting too.

​HD images of the finds recovered at both sites can be seen here and here.

The last survey of 2018 saw us return to a long-standing Roman favourite that has produced some wonderful coins and artefacts during 20 visits since March 2014.

The first field we had a look at was drilled with wheat and revealed a couple of fragments of Roman pottery and a few coins.
The field next to did have potatoes in it but it was too rough to search there so we looked at another field nearby.

This produced a very small hammered and one piece of Medieval pottery.
This was the opportunity that Rob was looking for to try out his new toy; a hexacopter drone fitted with a 4K camera!
Footage from this inaugural flight appears to be quite awesome considering it was carried out in a 25mph breeze! The footage can be seen here.

The last field we looked at was drilled with OSR but the crop had failed so it was re-drilled with wheat. This field has a Roman road running through it with a Romano-British settlement nearby. The search area had several fragments of Roman building material and pottery. As expected, a number of Roman coins and artefacts were recovered.

One artefact that was recovered stood out as being a rare fragment of a Roman glass bangle. This was the highlight of the day and one of the rarest artefacts we have ever recovered amongst some memorable finds over the past 8 years.

HD images of the finds can be seen here.

Today saw the team return to a site that we first surveyed three years ago to the day, almost.
The plan was to have a look at three different fields, all of them drilled with wheat and quite damp after the overnight drenching.
As anticipated, the soil was quite sticky, so some time was spent clearing the mud build-up on the spades and boots!

The first field has part of a deserted Medieval village in it and the first find was a cut-quarter of Stephen followed by two Edward I pennies.

The next field was mainly a Roman settlement that has been there for most of the Roman occupation. In all, 13 Roman coins and two fibulae, on was part of a trumpet fibula and the other was an early disc type brooch with a triskelle styled decoration that was inlaid with a red enamel.
​Lots of Roman pottery was on the surface made up of four main types.
Lunch beckoned so it was a long trek back to the vehicles for Christmas Dinner butties, crisps and chocolate.

The third field had the rest of the Medieval village and would you believe it, the first coin was a denarius of Septimius Severus dating to AD 193 - 211.
The next coin was a cut-quarter of King John along with a couple of Medieval buckles and typical green glazed Medieval pottery.

I know the days are now getting longer but not enough to stay out beyond 4pm without head-torches.​
With the light fading, we called in to see the landowners and spent an hour with the family catching up with a cup of tea and some festive stollen.

HD images can be seen here.
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It's been a slow start to the new season with this being our sixth outing since 15th September. On our way to the site we passed several fields that had huge pools of water on them and we thought that we were in for a real struggle. Thankfully, the soil was very sandy and was absolutely fantastic to dig and wasn't claggy at all.
 
This was on a brand new permission and looked to be a Roman fort or marching camp. The fort covers 4-acres (1.2 hectares) so is quite a small fort and probably held about 600 men in total.

The winter wheat ran across the fort at about 10 degree's to the surrounding east and west 35ft defence ditches. The crop also provided the guidelines for us to follow with great accuracy and confidence.
We also cut sections across the entire field looking for signs of a vicus but didn't find anything of note outside the fort perimeter.
We did however recover 10 Roman coins and a small amount of pottery including a small rim fragment of Samian Ware with a little decoration within the forts perimeter.
Artefacts were very scarce with an early gold-gilded Medieval strapend being one of the highlights. Some of the coinage did reflect the age of the fort at being around AD 118 but later Roman coinage recovered indicated that the fort could have been re-used or at least used as a stop-off point at a much later date?
Part of a double-looped Post Medieval buckle frame and a Elizabethan half-groat minted in London were also found within the fort boundaries along with an Australian three-pence piece dating AD 1943. The Elizabethan hammered coin was bent double so a bit of gentle persuasion was needed to bring it back to a recognisable state.
A circular disc-shaped object and several service buttons were unearthed along with a London and North-Western Railways button (1846 -1922).
What was impressive was the depth at which some of the coins were retrieved reaching down to 12 inches.

We were near to another potential permission so we called in for a chat..... what a chat that turned out to be and a complete story in itself!

We used our usual settings as on previous outings but as stated, we were achieving incredible depths with even the deep signals sounding extremely loud and clear.

HD images of the finds recovered can be seen here.

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.

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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.
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​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.