Does Research Make You A Better Historian Than Detectorist ?

[hotmill]

Research can help but a lot is down to luck. Classic example, a few weeks ago I get a new farm permission, all pasture. On the first day I visit the farm, start on the first field, no particular search pattern and within an hour find a nice Charles Half groat. I have covered that field several times since then using a grid method and have found nothing else of note.

Like Dungbeetle I am in North Wales and have never found a cut half, found lots of pennies and fragments of pennies but never a proper cut half.

[Spooyt Vane]

I've recently found out I missed a field.(Didn't know he owned that one)  Grain for 3 years and grass this year. I'm saving it for the winter when the grass dies back. And it's not one of those mineralised ones. I know there was a burial mound in the next field (NOT recorded) where I found some flints and crystals, also a late 1600's farm on the other side of the lane. Ever hopeful.

Val

I always admire your dedication Val and your love of the hobby.It shows in your posts...But dont get like me now, that the chase (research) is more fun than the catch........

[Val Beechey]

Praps I enjoy the research because I find something out about a place. More often than not when I go out and search I find nothing.  There is a certain amount of logic there Rob.  I do also get satisfaction from proving that there was a building there in the first place that no body, today, knows anything about. Just a shame they didn't leave something nice for me to find.

Val

[handyman [Alan}]

rofl "that the chase (research) is more fun than the catch........"  does that apply to marriage as well!! 

[Dale]

The items need to be on the land to make the finds if they not there they wont be found... But I agree with Geoff on the roman grots and cut thin coinage, I have been on my hands and knees looking for tiny grots, minims, it takes time to learn to find them as some are that small, and only give off a slight flick, your coil 5mm higher or a bad swing that coin is missed, no doubt about it.