My search began in June last year while the crops in the UK were nearly ready for harvesting , I had half a field to go at, roughly a couple of acres at the most which had previously been dug by archaeologists .With lots of pottery lay about most of which is grey ware in amongst it there were a few bits of samian ware too which is a better indicator of a more richer culture happening on the site I'm searching .A previous on what I call little scouting mission , I unearthed a silver flashed 2nd century dolphin brooch which was in poor condition but again was another indicator of a higher status of life on the site. So I got rolling early on a Saturday morning good weather and a field which the stubble had been disced so conditions were perfect , know we are almost sure a road ran through at a NW angle leading to what was another roman military fortified fort with a few other interesting features ,so I preceded to try and pick up the road area I searched in gridded areas and in doing this I noticed that the main concentration of grots were coming up on one side of the field so I started gridding that side of the field, I was about an hour in to doing this and I noticed something in the corner of my eye circular shaped just sat there no colour just a shape but this was easily more recognisable because the hole through the middle was visible, so I bent down and picked it up straight away my heart skipped a beat and all us detectorists know this feeling of (oh my god) ,with a little rub of my thumb instantly a blue colour shone through I stopped rubbing reached for my bag and my bottle of water I knew this was something special straight away so I wasn't risking damaging it. So there sat in the palm of my hand was beautiful blue bead with a bit more cleaning it starting showing a white tracery wrapped around it, so with the brooch and the bead i was certain there was more for me to unearth. Know I use the tadpole mode on my CTX3030 it allows me to listen to what’s actually going on in the area you need to be able to listen to the iron areas as this is the most likely place you will find the roman goodies and then training yourself to listen in between those other signals sounds technical but its more to do with perseverance. So over the next couple of hours my CTX3030 was pushed into overdrive then came a lovely pinging signal almost coin sounding a good solid signal, I dug a good spades worth of earth out as it didn't sound too deep at first so with my pin-pointer I dipped into the hole the pointer went off as soon as I hit the side wall at the bottom slightly off and about 6” down so with my spade I took another good chunk out which is something that everyone should do instead of chipping away at your hole and risking damaging anything , I could see something green and shaped covered in sticky mud I picked it up and as soon as I did I had the second massive surprise of the day and that doesn’t happen a lot my away be assured of that, there looking at me was a roman shaped head then turning it round was another head.. A double-sided head figure ,well excitement kicked in and I think I was actually breakdancing in the field all the research had paid off all those hours of scouring maps and write ups I had found an area of real highlight. My local FLO has all these items at present, the head figurine is the head of Janus a roman god that granted you safe passage, new beginnings looking back into the past but also looking into the future, it would of probably been mounted on something as it has a hole in the base with perhaps an iron lug to attach it to something, a very treasured find for sure and hopefully the FLO will be able to produce a bit more light into the find. Thanks for reading and Happy Hunting
Dan – England, UK
