26th March 2014, 12:13 PM
Responsible Detectorist Wrote:Apologies for possibly dumb question but when you say a 'ploughed site' is that a site that has just been ploughed or a site that has been ploughed in previous years. For example my Local Authority lets you detect public parks. I've seen pictures of the park some 40 years ago when it was a ploughed field. Would this therefore count as a ploughed site or not. I'm not looking for an excuse by saying 'most fields have been ploughed at some stage or another' as how am I to know if they have, however if you do know they had been ploughed I just wanted to know whether they counted as a ploughed site to which you were referring. Also does it make a difference if it was say ploughed 200 years ago as opposed to 5?it is still possible to work out where finds came from after one or even 10 ploughing episodes in certain circumstance. if you dig a hole and you see 25-30cm of dark silty soil which is different from the underlying strata you can probably assume you are in a plough zone (there are exceptions). you should always record the depth of the find along with its location. on the rare occasions you dig through the plough soil to recover a find it would be helpful if you took a note of the type of soil, its colour and general makeup. if you recover a find and you can see or get a signal for another in the same hole, please ask an archaeologist before you remove it.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers