Diary of our trip to Croatia 2014 - Part V

THURSDAY

Thursday morning we sat outside in the warm Croatian spring sunshine, drinking coffee, discussing the possibilities of the day. We heard the familiar sound of Steve's Landrover approaching and ordered a coffee for him.  As we sat Steve gave us some exciting news, the Museum had asked if we would go and have a look at a field where someone had been spotted detecting but nothing had been reported to them as having come from there. The Museum wanted to know what the field held.

In Croatia there are no laws specific to metal detecting but there are laws regarding items of cultural or historic importance. If you’re a Croatian and you want to go metal detecting then you can, however, if you find anything that may be of interest to the local museum then you must show them. As we are not Croatian we had to have written permission from both central and local Government to search and even then we were subject to the same laws.

We set off for the field in high spirits, today was going to be a good day – we didn’t know how good it was going to be though!  Once at the field we got the kit out.  Gordon and Gary opted to use the standard CTX 11" coil with tadpole 3 as the primary programme, I opted for the CTX 17" with Ghost as the primary.  One of the most useful features of the CTX 3030 is the User button.  When the machine is switched on it will default to the last programme used.  Go into menu and select another programme and from there switching between the two programmes is as easy as one press of the user button. It’s very handy for checking those “iffy” signals . 

From the edge of the field we could see a large dark area over to the left side and various other, smaller areas around the field. This looked very promising so we wasted no time in getting started. The ground was very busy with a lot of mineralisation, another good sign but not so good for me. The 17” coil isn’t the best thing to use on mineralised area’s so it was back to the car and a swap for the CTX11" Coil.  By the time I got back to the search area Gordon was already two bronze coins ahead of me. Gary had found a brooch, I had just started.  It wasn’t long before I started to find as well, first a  Roman bronze coin, then another.  Then a very loud signal with a firm reading on the screen.  It was bronze but not a coin, the signal was too stable for that.  I dug into the soil, it was an easy dig. The signal was still in the hole.  One more dig and it was out.  I’d gone about  8” down, still in the topsoil. I broke the clod of soil open and then broke into a smile, I immediately knew what it was. I’d found another example of the type of 15^th century ring I’d found on Tuesday.  Nice.  The sun was out, there was a warm breeze and I was having the best birthday ever. Did I mention it was my birthday?  It was about to get better and then better still.

My next few signals were normal detecting rubbish finds, foil and unidentifiable scraps. Then I got a beautiful sound through my headphones, a nice low grunt that lets me know that I’m on top of silver …. Or it could be lead!  Today it was the former, out of the ground in one dig, the clod broken and a silver edge was there to be seen.  A nice, thick silver edge of a coin. The lump of soil was broken open just like opening a birthday present and a Roman denarius of Antononius Pius was revealed.  Stunning.  We spent a couple of hours searching this site, after all, we were there to survey it and give the Museum an idea of its past use or occupation. We had found Roman fibulae, bronze and silver coins from the 1^st century to the 15^th century, spindle whirls (or are they net weights?) and a 15^th century ring.  Steve had also found a Neolithic stone hammer lying on the surface.  A very successful morning indeed, the field had been identified as a site that had seen use for over a millennia.

We left that site and went for some lunch. Over lunch Steve told us of another area where a detectorist had been seen, again with no finds being reported to the museum from that area. The difference was that the information had come second hand so although he knew the area he wasn’t sure of the exact field. Would we like to go there and see if we could locate it? Well, it would be rude to refuse!

It was quite a drive to the area but a pleasant one through smaller towns and villages.  When we got to the area we found ourselves at the top of a slope overlooking a plain. At the bottom of the slope was a very dark area that was probably about 300ft (90mm) wide and disappeared into a wooded area about half a mile to out left.  This was a huge area to search. The farmer was working the field, harrowing it ready for planting sunflowers so Steve approached him to gain permission and gain whatever information he could.  Permission was readily granted and unbelievably, the farmer then happily pointed us to the general area that the other detectorist had been searching.  We wasted no time in walking down to the area and getting started. Within minutes of switching the machines on Gary called out that he had found a large bronze coin. Steve identified it quickly as a celtic coin circa 100B.C. A very nice find. Then I had another one but that was quickly eclipsed by Gordon finding a small silver coin of the same era. We hadn’t been on this site for more than 5 minutes and already we had three coins, all from around 100 B.C. But it didn’t end there, the coins came out one after another after another.  We had stumbled onto a substantial hoard of Celtic coins. What a birthday treat! 

Our permits only allowed us to detect up until 3pm, it was now approaching 2:30. We had to call in to the archaeologist, Hrvoje (Hervoi), to inform him that we had found a hoard and to ask how he wanted us to proceed. At the same time we asked for an extension on our permitted search time. The search time was extended until 4pm and we were only to recover signals from the ploughsoil levels, we were not to dig into undisturbed subsoil.  This wasn’t a problem, we understood the importance of the instruction.
In the remaining hour and a half we increased the quantity of coins found to 49, it was an amazing time. The following day we returned to the site in the morning with Hrvoje who was delighted to also find a Neolithic axe and flint scraper on the field. He got very excited by this as there is no flint to be found in the province, not for about 50 miles. That scraper must have been introduced to the site. In all we recovered over 100 Celtic coins and 2 Appelonian silver coins, one scraper, one hand axe and a brooch from the site. A very, very successful hunt and what we thought was a fantastic end to the week. 

Friday afternoon we thought we had a meeting at the museum, what we were to actually do that afternoon left us stunned to silence by the enormity of what was said, the details will follow.