Tuesday
In the middle of Vinkovci there is a large archaeological dig happening. They believe that the site is that of a temple, it spans four centuries. It is just over the road from the site where the Vinkovci treasure consisting of 34 high quality silver plates was found a few years ago. We had an invitation to visit the site and to search with our CTX 3030’s …. It would be rude to refuse that sort of invitation!
When we were told it was a large site we expected it to be large, we didn’t expect it to be huge! The site is tucked away behind some council administration buildings and once excavated and recorded they will be building a back up data centre on the site. Rescue archaeology. We met up with Hrvoje Vulac (head archaeologist, all round good guy his name is pronounced Hervoi) and were given a tour of the site. The archaeology starts at around 5’ (1.5m) under the current ground level and at the moment goes down to about 12’ (3.6m) under ground level, in the future it may go lower. The top levels of the site date to around the 4th century and the bottom levels are around the 1st century with buildings from later centuries cutting through the remains.
Having spent the morning exploring the site and being informed of its structure we sloped off for some lunch and on our return the CTX 3030’s came out. We had an area to search that was around 20’ x 40’ (6m x 12m) and it had to be done thoroughly. It was time for the CTX 06 coils again! Great depth isn’t needed as the excavation is done layer by layer. In no time at all we were in and underway, each of us being assigned a technician. Our job was simple enough, we got a signal and told the technician where it was and whether it was ferrous or non-ferrous. Non-ferrous signals had a circle drawn around them, the ferrous signals got a circle with a cross through them.
Once we were happy that all the signals had been found the technicians set to with recovering the items. That’s when we blew them away by showing them the Pro-Find 25 probes, they had never seen one before. Using the probes we were able to accurately put them straight over the signal and by lifting the tip off the ground, we were able to estimate the depths that the items were at. This increased their recovery rate hugely as traditionally any spoil to be searched is shovelled into a wheel barrow and dumped outside on the spoil heap, that’s where the metal detectorist finds them. They know roughly whereabouts on the site the items come from but they don’t know exactly. By recovering the items in this new way they were able to use their laser ranging equipment to accurately log the positions of the finds in 3 dimensions which will allow them to build a better picture of the depositions.
It was a slow process and under the terms of our government issued permits, we weren’t allowed to work after 3pm. We know there were 8 coins found and plotted, we know that they all came from the 4th century. We also know that the CTX 3030 fitted with the CTX 06 coil and the Pro-Find 25 probe have shown the archaeologists just how useful metal detectors can be on an excavation.
Tomorrow we get let off the lead with some fantastic results!
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