Where to Start With a New Permission?

Our Route to Success Finding Double Silver

What’s the biggest challenge faced in metal detecting? It might surprise you that it isn’t found out in the field, in the research books identifying ambiguous objects, or even lost in the endless search settings of your metal detector. No, the challenge starts before the metal detecting even begins. You see, here in the UK it’s quite literally the law to obtain the landowner's permission before metal detecting, searching or digging anywhere - even on public land - something which can often feel like an impossible task.

Sadly, we can’t tell you ‘how’ to get a permission. That’s not what this newsletter is about. But once you’ve achieved the impossible, gained the green light, and suddenly have between 50 and 1000 acres at your feet. What then? Ever stepped foot onto a field and baulked at the scale of it? (Why did it look so much smaller on Google Maps!?) We’ve all been there, and will continue to be there time and time again, because, guess what, by some act of God, we’ve just gained a new permission, and where on earth are we going to start?

Aerial Archaeology

In all honesty, your first steps onto your new permission shouldn’t even involve leaving your house.

For centuries antiquaries and romantic poets have been aware of hidden features within our landscapes; puzzled over earthworks, embankments and crop marks, all hinting towards past communities lost to the plough.

‘Yet eyes instructed, as along they pass,
May learn from crossing lines of stunted grass
And stunted wheat stems, that refuse to grow,
What intersecting causeways sleep below.’

- John Kenyon, ‘Silchester’, 1838

Today, however, we benefit from a unique point of view over our historical contemporaries: Aerial Archaeology; first explored in 1906 when aerial photographs of Stonehenge were taken from a hot air balloon by a Col. P.H. Sharpe and transformed through technological developments during the World Wars and the extensive surveys and articles published by Aerial Archaeology pioneers such as O.G.S. Crawford.

The first fieldwork starts in the sky, not on the ground, and we are lucky to have several incredible resources publicly available for the amateur archaeologist (or metal detectorist!) right at our fingertips:

Invaluable Resources

• LiDar: https://www.lidarfinder.com/

• Historic England Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/aerial-archaeology-mapping-explorer/

• Side by Side Historic Maps: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/

5 Archaeological Features From the Air

Because of course it also helps to have an idea of what to look for…

1. Prehistoric Barrows

Believe it or not, almost every parish contains at least one prehistoric barrow.

These mounds of earth or stone are easily identified by the ring ditch dug around them; a feature which is often the only ghostly footprint left behind in the soil once they have been levelled by centuries of ploughing. Dating from 3800-1400 BC to 800 AD, barrows have been practised for an immense period, from Neolithic ceremonies and burials to Anglo-Saxon burials such as Sutton Hoo.

2. Iron Age Banjo Enclosure

One of the more distinctive types of prehistoric enclosures found in the British landscape.

Named for their banjo-like / frying pan-esque shape created by their often, long and elaborate funnelled passageway entrances, these enclosures are often found around Iron Age settlements and could be an indication of high status. They are believed to have originated around 750-500 BC and continued in use up to the Roman Conquest of 43 AD.

3. Iron Age / Roman Farming

Who knew ancient farming could be so regular and organised?

Known as ‘brickwork’ or ‘coaxial’ systems, these ancient field systems are very regularly laid out, characterised by uniform, small, square or rectangular plots which tend to follow a particular axis revealing the natural spread of settlement. With individual fields ranging from 400 sqm to 5000 sqm, these field systems can often cover more than 2 sq km, supporting a substantial settlement or community.

4. Ridge and Furrow

Reminders of a more open, communal way of life.

These wave-like undulations are one of the more easily identifiable ancient farming features in our landscapes, the leftovers from the Medieval open-field system. At its peak in the 13th and 14th Centuries, open-field agriculture saw large swathes of land divided up into strips marked by ridges and furrows - a practice which not only divided the land but also provided excellent drainage. Within the village, these strips were grouped into parcels known as ‘furlongs’, which would be allocated amongst the peasants. There were no individual ‘farms’ merely a community working together out on the land.

5. Deserted Medieval Village

In the English countryside, there are more than 3,000 deserted villages.

In the 14th and 15th Centuries, England saw hundreds of villages and communities lost - buried under the plough or converted into pasture. The Black Death likely had a large impact on this, drastically cutting short a village’s population and weakening it at a crucial moment when the rising price of wool was causing a shift in land use from arable to sheep farming, making it easier for the landlords to evict what small communities survived and make better profits out of their land.

Wellies on the Ground

Armed with this arsenal of research, there’s only one thing left … your first visit …

Parking up onto the overgrown verge, pulling on our gear and pushing through the wooden farm gate, our new permission stretches out before us. Much bigger than it ever looked on Google Maps. It’s easy to let the nerves crush us in this moment, the field is nothing more than an intimidating stranger, but we already know it better than we realise.

There’s a reason we’ve spent years gazing at this pasture, it’s the adjacent block to our Deserted Medieval Village and from the obsessive aerial archaeology we’ve conducted, we know exactly where to start. The majority of this vast pasture is consumed by furlongs of ridge and furrow - clearly part of our DMV’s farm system - there’s a stream running through the bottom half - the overflow to the spring situated in the main village - and right next to this stream surrounded by a column of ancient oak trees is a rectangular portion absolutely filled with earthworks. We aren’t too certain what these earthworks are depicting, a jumble of raised banks and dips, but roughly along the axis of the main street, they must be connected to our deserted medieval village. And as it’s the most intriguing part of our pre-dig research, this rectangle is exactly where we are going to start, and we aren’t even going to bother turning the Manticore on before we get there.

First Dig Strategies

Moving around a new permission on the first visit can be somewhat of a strange dance, but we like to stick to a methodology that seems to work for us.

• Begin by targeting the most intriguing area found in the aerial archaeology

• Fan outwards from here following waterways and natural routes of passage through the land

• Listen to the field, only on the ground can you feel part of the landscape and truly imagine how it would have been used centuries ago

• Try to visit every area of the field, don’t get bogged down in one area, listen to the vibes and try to understand the distribution of uses across the land - comparing one area to another will help tease out the hotspots of activity and where you should refocus on your next visit

• Most importantly: Enjoy it! Appreciate the new landscape and embrace being out in nature

Steps in the Right Direction

Because of course, we’ve got to share the results right?!

Henry III Voided Long Cross Cut Half (1247 - 1272 AD)

Small change from over 750 years ago.

In Medieval England, prior to 1279, it was pretty essential in local trade and commerce to have small change, but their coinage system consisted almost entirely of a single silver penny. So to create this small change this silver penny would be cut into half and quarters to create half pennies and farthings, and this was pretty much common practice - people had been cutting their coins in half since Saxon times.

Therefore the emergence of this Henry III Cut Half, roughly an hour into our exploration of the rectangle of unusual earthworks is incredibly exciting. It’s our first piece of evidence that these earthworks could be of medieval origin and therefore connected to our deserted medieval village, plus it confirms the existence of trade suggesting some kind of industry existing here.

William III Sixpence (1694 - 1702 AD)

A fundamental change in English coinage.

By the 17th Century, English currency was in a state of emergency. New coins had been milled (machine-made) since 1662 in an attempt to resolve coin clipping, a problem which had plagued England’s coins for centuries. But no one took the hammered coins out of circulation before introducing the new money. Therefore by the time William III ascended to the throne, the milled coins were being hoarded and the hammered coins, clipped down to virtually nothing, were circulating as the bulk of the currency. So in 1696 William III introduced the Great Recoinage, demonetising all of the hammered coins, and re-minting them as his milled counterparts, refreshing the entire bulk of English currency.

This was our final find of the day and a reward for sticking to our first-dig strategy. By now we’ve plodded over the vast majority of our new pasture, checked out the waterway, up into the ridge and furrow, and woven our way back through the old field boundaries into the rectangular earthworks. We’ve gathered finds from across the field slowly learning which areas possess the greatest frequency of activity and built an idea of the entire area.

This is exactly why we’ve returned right back to where we started, this William III Sixpence has just confirmed our suspicions that this area remained an important place of (possible) industry for centuries. It’s the portion of our field richest in finds and an area that deserves a more intensive search, slowly working over to tease out all of its secrets. We may not be close acquaintances with our new field just yet, but double silver is never a bad way to start, and now we know exactly which areas require a more in-depth investigation.

Do you have any techniques you use for that first nerve-wracking (and exciting!) visit to a new permission?