My Diary of our trip to Croatia 2013 - Part 3

Wednesday  day 5 - detecting day 3

This was the day I had been waiting for, a chance to search Steve's medieval coin hoard site. He had found the hoard a couple of years ago near a Serb village in Croatia and had recovered over 500 14th century Hungarian hammered silver coins. The hoard had been scattered by the plough, and Steve had recovered coins from large area, never finding the container. He still believed there would be more coins to be found for the right detectors, hence our invite.

We needed to do a couple of things first before driving to the hoard site. The first was to visit the local Wednesday market where all the flowers were being sold for their version of Halloween. They take them and decorate the graves of their departed loved ones.

While we were at the market Richard decided to buy a pig roaster for the equivalent of £60. This came complete with a 12v motor and axle stands, a ready to go automatic turning rotisserie for a pig up to 40kg.

The second task was to tow Steve's old Land Rover “Doris” to a garage to be stripped for spares. I had the job of being towed.

All these chores had eaten into the day, we arrived at the hoard field at 12:30pm. Steve walked me to the hot spot are showed me the area the coins had spread. I decide to grab the CTX 3030, which was still fitted with the 17" coil, and walk over the area Steve had just shown me. I dug my first coin first signal. This had had given a low-tone response (using 50 conductive tone). So now I knew what they sounded like, I got my head down, soon reaching a total of 27 off the hotspot. Richard and Steve had both found more coins from the hoard, totaling 50 for the three of us.

The field had been sown in winter wheat and with all the digging; the damage to the crop was starting to become noticeable. So we moved away from the hoard into the centre of the field where Richard had already found a nice copper engraved medieval ring. I moved up the field towards a hedge finding a Roman ring and a couple of coins.

Steve wanted to call it a day on the hoard field, as he didn't want to upset the farmer trampling his crop too much, so we moved to the next uncultivated field where Steve had previously found fragments of a Roman silver fibula brooch.

I continued using the 17" coil and proceeded to dig several deep drinks cans over a foot deep. The Field was covered in green waste, where household rubbish is mixed with manure and spread on the fields. This became really annoying so we moved to a freshly disced field nearby. Steve found a nice Roman silver coin followed by a brooch. I dug a few small Roman coins, but the best find fell to Richard’s CTX 3030, a lovely Roman belt fitting complete with its rivets. I then finished the session with a second less impressive belt fitting.

That evening we visited Steve and his family for a homemade chicken curry, and afterwards entertained his kids playing blackjack Vegas style (chips and all). All in all a very good day indeed!

Thursday day 6 - detecting day 4

Steve turned up at 10:30am and looked sick as a dog.

We told him to go to bed and get himself well for Friday when we were hoping to search his Celtic site. He said we could return to the site where I had found the Gratian Siliqua and we were soon on our way.

We parked up near Steve's suspected river crossing and started searching the land adjacent the river for more Roman coins. After a few minutes an excited Richard came over to me clasping a lovely Roman weight, inlaid with silver and engraved with two Roman Emperors. There were also letters in silver under the figures... This was obviously an important find.

I continued the search finding Roman coins, recording each of them on the CTX 3030 (as well as a GeoHunt) so I could show Hrvoje the power of this feature. Richard then shouted he'd found something good and held something in his hand and asked me to guess what it was. As he walked closer to me I could see it was a massive brooch, one that looked to be late Roman. He'd found the best two things of the day, both large items, and I’d found and recorded 30 coins.

That evening we popped in to see a very sick Steve to show what we’d found and to bring the Wednesday’s hammered coins for him to clean, identify and record. Then we had dinner, a few pints, and went back to the hotel for an early night.

Coins cleaned by Steve Gaunt

Richards brooch cleaned by Vinkovci museum