2 Days on Shotgun Alley...

CRUSADER · Oct 4, 2014

Dad (6 hours) & I (9.5 hours) gridded for 2 days & we are still getting lots of goodies. Also the rate of shotgun shells is rapidly decreasing, so happy days....

44 Roman Coins
Rose & Royal farthing
14th C Medieval Buckle
1st C Fibula
2 Bronze Beads
Amazing Saxon Wrist Clasp - Dad got this, I'm awaiting a book on these, but I'm thinking 480-550AD. 8-)

Medieval Strapend (Beast head)
Medieval Thimble
Tudor Belt Mounts
2 Hammered (1 each day & 1 each) but Dad got the better Ed III York Mint Penny
Saxon Gold Chip Carved Frag

joesmarbles · Oct 4, 2014

Hi Crusader,

You guys are going to have quite a museum in the future, perhaps you could retire and live of the entrance fees, is there a book deal in the future?

best wishes.....Joe McDonough

Zodiacdiverdave · Oct 4, 2014

Happy days is right. Man Cru. you sure "know how to knock it out of the Park" (Baseball tirm) :thumbsup:

don't you.
Congrats,
ZDD

CRUSADER · Oct 4, 2014

joesmarbles said:
Hi Crusader,

You guys are going to have quite a museum in the future, perhaps you could retire and live of the entrance fees, is there a book deal in the future?

best wishes.....Joe McDonough

I'm still considering a book, but not a general one on my finds.

Jyverb64 · Oct 4, 2014

You guys get some great finds from those fields.

CaptainCoil · Oct 4, 2014

Amazing finds! Congrats!

joesmarbles · Oct 4, 2014

Good luck Crusader, the future looks very bright for you and Dad, Best wishes.....Joe McDonough

BuckleBoy · Oct 4, 2014

Great recoveries! Is the Saxon wrist clasp the one with the gold gilding in your photos?

hammered · Oct 4, 2014

Nice to see you're still getting out and finding the goods. Who knows, I might be getting out again one day, can't let you have all the fun.

hammered

Argentium · Oct 4, 2014

That Saxon chip carved gold thing is amazing ! Gotta love the hammered silvers too ! For a lot of us over here , the Ponds Creme jar
might well have been the find of the day !

CRUSADER · Oct 5, 2014

BuckleBoy said:
Great recoveries! Is the Saxon wrist clasp the one with the gold gilding in your photos?

No its the piece above that.

CRUSADER · Oct 5, 2014

hammered said:
Nice to see you're still getting out and finding the goods. Who knows, I might be getting out again one day, can't let you have all the fun.

hammered

Thought you had left us for good, glad your back & I hope life gives you the time to hunt.

CRUSADER · Oct 5, 2014

Jyverb64 said:
You guys get some great finds from those fields.

This field is massive, & mostly filled with nothing.

I heard a story recently that a detectorist spent 2 days on this farm, gave up & never came back. There is a morale to this story, somewhere. :thumbsup:

treblehunter · Oct 5, 2014

CRUSADER said:
This field is massive, & mostly filled with nothing.

I heard a story recently that a detectorist spent 2 days on this farm, gave up & never came back. There is a morale to this story, somewhere.

Very nice finds, that little story will stick with me, thanks for the tip.

pepperj · Oct 5, 2014

CRUSADER said:
This field is massive, & mostly filled with nothing.

I heard a story recently that a detectorist spent 2 days on this farm, gave up & never came back. There is a morale to this story, somewhere.

Nice going on the finds and it once again shows that a place doesn't always give up it's secrets easily Good job sticking to the field as it shows that there's lots of history and worth a return hit or two.

CRUSADER · Oct 5, 2014

pepperj said:
Nice going on the finds and it once again shows that a place doesn't always give up it's secrets easily Good job sticking to the field as it shows that there's lots of history and worth a return hit or two.

These fields are big & it takes 10 minutes to walk from the car to the site. Easy to miss if you don't know where to look.

Westfront · Oct 5, 2014

Good score now when the shotgun shells are gone. Unbelievable how much stuff is in this field under all that trash. :hello2:

joesmarbles · Oct 5, 2014

Thanks Crusader, Joe McDonough

hammered · Oct 5, 2014

CRUSADER said:
Thought you had left us for good, glad your back & I hope life gives you the time to hunt.

Hello me old mate, not a lot of time to do anything but work at the moment, doing 80 plus hours a week to get back to where I was. But I have been looking at all those lovely fresh ploughed fields round here,and no one detecting them. I was also looking at a new Deus, so who knows, maybe a detecting post from hammereds favefeld might be posted before too long. Good to see and read all the posts on here though, brings back great mmemories.

hammered

CRUSADER · Dec 5, 2014

UPDATE:

The Saxon Wrist Clasp pictured below was found by Cru'Dad. We knew it was kind of special when we found it but the story just got better. I researched it & couldn't find any matches on the UK Databases. I then had to buy a specialist book (hard to get, only 1 online sale in the UK & that price was crazy, so I imported one much cheaper) - Only to find it was not in that book. So my conclusion at this point was its an Unclassified type.
I asked Westfront to do some research in Germany, after all this is where it travelled from, or somewhere in that general area. :occasion14:

The response from those experts was:
''your wrist clasp seems to be unique. No match found. 6-7th century, Franconian/Merowingian more possible than Saxon.''

There is no evidence of 7th C, it's all 470-600AD. Therefore, it dates to the 6th C.(IMO)

More importantly, in some ways, is that its one of the best pieces of evidence to back my theory that this site was part of that very rare period of history, sometimes referred to as the Migration Period (or Dark Ages) & that this site included foreign settlers. This new emerging culture began to shape our earliest Medieval history & we were the ones to put them on the map. (it was unknown)