Thursday, April 11th

It has happened again.....another Lucky Dog Day! 

It poured rain last night and the fields were muddy and not much fun to be in. Having to stop and clean the two inches of icky, clay mud off your coil, shovel and boots before you can walk another step just is not a fun time.  We picked a field that has a wheat crop growing so we didn't have as much mud to deal with.  It was a field that Clarence, Mindy and I had good success with a couple of years ago.  I headed up the hill to a spot next to a farm building and heard  a solid target in my headphones.  I flipped over a shovel full of soil and there it was....that familiar glint of gold.  Not wanting to get my hopes up, I picked it up and started to clean the mud off with a soft toothbrush.  It sure looked like gold.  I called Clarence on the radio and told him I have something that looks like gold but I just didn't know.  He hiked across the field and looked at it.  He thought it was gold, too.  This is not a coin.  It is a handmade, one of a kind, possibly a pendant, maybe a clothing fastener.....we just don't know yet.  It looks like it may have held an intaglio or a gem stone which  is now missing.

We called our expert leader, the man with the answers and the contacts to ID mystery items.  He drove out to the field to take a look. He felt it was old gold, not plated as I had feared.  By the time we drove back to our lodging, he had taken it home and looked at it under his electron microscope. He confirmed it is solid gold, Medieval or possible older.  WOW!  He is soaking it now in distilled water to get the mud and muck off.  Not sure yet what it actually is.  It might be one for the museum staff to decide.  I loved it when I thought it was just electroplated.  The fact that it is solid gold has put me over the edge (just a bit).  Combine that with the rare Celtic enamelled brooch I found last week and Clarence's Celtic gold and Saxon gold...this has been our best trip ever for finds.

Before I forget...Aussie Vocabulary Word of the Day is....UTE.  A "ute" is a small utility vehicle, like a pickup truck only smaller and with a flat bed on back.  There you have it.  Use it in a sentence three times this week.

Tomorrow we will detect a half day only as long as the predicted thunderstorms go around us. We will come in early, clean our finds and prepare anything that needs an export license to be taken out of the UK. We still need to clean the mud off our gear and pack everything up. We spend so much time packing and repacking to get all four bags under the 50# limit that we usually just give up and throw ourselves on the mercy of the airlines.  We drive back into London Saturday morning and then we will be on our way home. I don't know what we will do next year to possibly beat this trip.

Good night all!