It's doing my head in, it really is...

[omegamike]

This is my second season on new land. I have fields that produce the odd Celtic, Roman and Medieval already so I know what I'm looking for. The last two season have been spent detecting mostly new fields. Bet most of you on here can't beat this..... Church with Moat & Bailey 2 x Roman Villa sites 2 x Celtic enclosure sites Roman burial urn field Church with TWO manor houses And hardly a thing to show for all the above sites. My total (top of my head) is 15 grots from one of the vila sites, one lizzy hammy from one of the church sites and one Edward hammy from a Celtic enclosure site and the usual assortment of tat I know some of you will say keep at it, get through the trash and you will find the good stuff. But to be honest with my GPX I'm picking up nearly everything that the coil passes over!. The amount of non-ferrous material that I have dug up is phenomenal. It appears that even with loads of research and the luck of the gods for getting permission I still can't find that 'hot spot' field What I wanted to ask you folk out there, or at least the ones with brilliant fields, is how the devil did you find them? luck? research? Are you detecting fields with villa's or churches? I suppose I'm clutching at straws but I could do with a bit of guidance. I'm beginning to loose all faith in my ability to find new fields with something other than tat

[Cumbrian Fox]

in a word "Patience" Good finds dont jump out at you every day Mike. I have been on a great site say 15 times now and I bet almost half of the times ive been out I have come back with nothing but lead and junk. Its just like fishing, how many times do people go out fishing and catch bugger all? The more hours your out on the field the more chance you have of finding goodies. Never expect them to just throw themselves under your detector as it does not work like that. That`s what most people who are newbies in our area expect to happen and find them selves blaming everything in sight because they have spent 2 days in a field with a castle, villa, battle and market on it and found nothing. I think they expect too much and run round at speed in eager anticipation of becoming rich instead of enjoying the hobby and getting in the mind set of anything found is a bonus.

[romano-brit]

thats why i never do any research coz youll only be disapointed

[Cumbrian Fox]

thats why i never do any research coz youll only be disapointed

But research gives you a far better chance of finds than pot luck field walking, or am I wrong?

[Tombs]

god i know how you feel, where i live almost everyone will let you detect on their land whats more because wales doesn't have anything to detect most land is virgin and their are castles, churches, bronze age stuff, iron age and usually all together! yet i find very little on these sites, my 3 best fields are a old dog racing field i had no idea that it was there i just went in the field randomly and came out with about 100 coins.
the second i was asked to detect by the land owners who had seen me detecting next to their property, it turns out that this field had a load of ruble and soil dumped in it that had been taken from our local town when they cleared the old medieval market site.
my third field is just a field in the middle of nowhere, i dont even know why we gave it a go but we did and it has given 30 or forty silver so far!
all my good spots where found by luck not research.......you just have to give luck a chance, but if your swinging that coil you are.
the long and short of it is metal detecting is the most annoying and rewarding hobby known to man

edit. i have spent hrs doing research though.

[ARGONAUTE]

I can't say much because my oldest known coin is 1809, but my guess is that the good finds are deep. So therefore take a test, clean up a spot from all the signals and then put on progressively larger coils (+17 inches) but include both elliptical and round into the pattern. I'd hunt this small patch or transect repetitively under different conditions (dry, wet, warm etc). Don't make this the only thing you do when you go to that site - mix it up with different strategies. Try it on two different sites and let us know

[Captainpugwash]

I used to spend hours in our county records office many years ago studying records and old maps and having copies made, it was surprising what you can find out, I think alot of todays detectorists just go blind onto land without a clue what if anything was there in the past. Waving the detector around a field was/is only a small part of the process. Over thirtyfour years it certainly paid dividends for me,
ie army encampments, saxon battle field, mutiple disused footpaths ect. Sometimes you research a farm which is realy promissing only to find that it as been used for training during the war, which is a pain in the ass. Richard 16DD said Wales as very little metalic history, but if you look for it there is some there to be found. As I am leaving this area I have given my collection of old maps and other items to our local club in Mold North Wales.

[ARGONAUTE]

Ok, but in this case the site has known history - so there no blindness here (mike still has a hold on his brains). So why is that there are limited finds? a) there is nothing to find but junk - junk is infinite; b) the interesting finds are obscured - junk:finds ratio = high; c) the finds are deep and obscured by junk and depth; d) someone cleaned up the site and left

So some questions ...
Are the sites you search ploughed or disturbed? Or are they just pasture?
Are you focussing only on the good signals? What about the whispers?

[omegamike]

All ploughed sites, some shallow some deep..... well, about 12 inches which is about as deep as they go these days. Initial trip to a new field I walk at a leisurely pace picking out the stronger signals. Second visit I slow right down and dig 'everything' even whispers. Third and subsequent visits I detect slow, low, and dig just about everything I can hear, shallow, deep, strong and week signals..... and at the end of the session I spend about an hour or so walking a little faster in the hope of bumping into a 'hot spot'? You have to remember my GPX is going pretty deep as well, you would expect something to turn up in all the non-ferrous finds I dig up? and believe me that's one hell of a lot of non-ferrous targets I'm digging up!

[Captainpugwash]

Hers example of a good site that isnt a good site. For years I wanted to get onto this site, in the end I got permission to detect on it. This site was approx 80 yards from a excavated Roman bath house, where hundreds of coins ect had come from it during a dig by the archiologists. Went there with great expections and got absolutly nowt, there was a natural spring comming up though the ground, which was probably the source for the bath house, the field was also on a slope. Myself, Mike Offa and Jayhay detected this field with no luck, I can only put it down to the fact that the ground was soft/wet and artifacts had sunk beyound the capabilities of our detectors. Annoying.

[jeb]

Suppose it didn`t cross your mind Dave that its been done already ?

[Captainpugwash]

Suppose it didn`t cross your mind Dave that its been done already ?

Never been touched before, I had to wait for the old farmer to die, he was an horrible person, I then had to wait again for another farmer to rent the field and let me on there.

[Davidhod]

I was on the best field in the world just before it was seeded, now its been harvested there's nothing to be found except lead and buttons. It all depends on who lost what when and where, the turn of the plough every year since, build up or loss of soil, disposal of trash and which few square meters you happen to pass the coil over.

It's all random, you can increase your chances but it's still basically random.

[jerrykerry]

Agree with David - a field can be barron one year and a bounty the next - or comes to life years down the road - turn of the plough and other factors.
Ive found little so far this new season - detecting fields which have given plenty but not now - so just waiting for mr plough and going where I can.

[omegamike]

I still can't get my head round some of this.......

I mean - if you have a good field and get finds coming out all over at 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 inches then the following season you get nothing? where are all the finds? surely they are still at a similar depth? why wouldn't you find them but at the same time find plenty of 'tat' (non-ferous)? if your finding the tat then why not the good stuff??????

[jerrykerry]

I have a field recorded by the archies as having a multiple of ages using the land from bronze age through to modern.
It showed ditches - round houses - enclosures etc etc on the aerial photos.
I have found Medieval but not anything else ...well... apart from a large roman coin which came up from depth when a water mains was put through the field this spring........and thats why I think Im not finding the real old stuff - its too deep.
Even the famer said that they were only discing these days - so as to save fuel rather than plough.

[roastedtoe]

I have this great site. It's massive. It's seen recorded settlement and multiple use for thousands of years. The ground is also changing constantly. I work it a hell of a lot. I'm about to go now. Some weeks, if I'm prepared to get up before work and go out into the wind and rain I can get four or five trips onto a week. But I rarely find any medieval or roman finds! Every couple of months I find ONE coin. More gold rings than most fields I guess but I'd swap one of those for a nice roman or hammered any time. So god only knows how many hours and how much effort I put in for the 6 Romans and 2 hammereds (that's right only two in two years)?! I've gotten so desperate I've just bought a stone age detector () with a tiny coil in the hope of sniffing out more ancient coins amongst the acres of junk. If I double my find rate in the next year I'll be pleased. But so be it. Just keep going. This activity is like fishing. Half the pleasure is the peace of the open spaces and the elements.

So JUST KEEP GOING and know your effort will be rewarded. It always is. You deserve it. You will get it.

p.s. all that said, I'd be cheesed off by now too mate if I were you. But keep going. Keep that heart strong!

[Captainpugwash]

I dont know much about farming but I presume discing turns the top few perhaps three to four inches, after so many years the nutriants in the top soil would disapear and the need for more fertiliser to be used. It says in one of the above post by Jerry that farmers are discing because of the costs of fuel. Would it not make sense if you have a historicaly recorded good site to approach the farmer and offer to pay the additional fuel costs to deep plough the field, this would benefit you and the farmer as he would be getting fresh soil on the surface ie a rejuvinated field. I have done a similar thing with a local farmer here, I didnt pay but gave him some equipment I had no futher use for. I asked him a couple of years ago and he did it before the last crop went in (to be honest I think he might have been going to do it anyway) so the benefits should show later in the year.
After he ploughed it we detected on it and found virtualy nothing but after he had rolled/chained it it made a difference, but then we had to come off as it was seeded.

[Rob]

An old archaeologist friend of mine who was pro detecting always maintained there was only 2% of the metalic finds in any fields within detecting range after each ploughing. How he knew this is beyond me but he has a Phd in the subject so must know what he is talking about, the finds must be there, just a matter of time.

[dannyroche555]

my best field has no history
no crop marks
no pottery
no oyster shells
and its rammed full of goodies....
on the other hand i have villa sites, saxon burial sites celtic sites with round houses and they produce very very little.
reason being they more than likely have been done.

[omegamike]

Thanks for the replies gents. I will stick with it and keep my fingers crossed for better results. You will be the first to know if the new fields produce anything in the way of finds! But don't hold your breath..... there's an awful lot of land to detect....