Site Research for Detectorists, Fieldwalkers and Archaeologists - Softcover

Reseña del editor

Site research, it seems, is one of the more neglected aspects of our hobby. Why should one field be productive of finds year after year and yet the next field be totally barren? The answer is past human activity, and David Villanueva shows in this book simple ways, through map and document research, how to locate such activity. Site Research contains 160 full colour pages divided into 20 chapters, profusely illustrated with examples of maps and documents, and examples of finds resulting from the suggested search methods. Although written mainly for detectorists, this book will also be of interest and help to fieldwalkers, local historians and archaeologists.

Biografía del autor

David Villanueva was born in Birmingham in 1951 and grew up in
the Midlands. In the early 70s his mother bought him a copy of Ted
Fletcher's book: A Fortune under Your Feet, which inspired him to buy a
metal detector - a Goldfinger BFO - the performance was very poor by
current standards but it did find coins and David became hooked. A few
months later he upgraded to a deeper seeking machine and became very fond
of searching beaches which were very productive of modern coins and
jewellery at the time. In those early days David also took an interest in
other forms of treasure hunting including dump digging, SCUBA diving and
gold panning.

Following a move to Whitstable, Kent, David took to nearby beaches with his
trusty old Pulsedec but quickly found that the machine was not well-suited
to local conditions - the Pulsedec having no discrimination and there being
plenty of iron around. Changing to a locally produced C-Scope 1220B, which
worked well on the drier parts of the beaches encouraged him to try out
some inland sites.

He joined a metal detecting club and also gained permission to search a
small farm, making all sorts of finds that previously he had only read
about in Treasure Hunting - hammered silver coins for instance.

Having long had a keen interest in history David started researching his
locality, which led to more productive sites to search and to write about
in Treasure Hunting.

Continually delving into local history and following his research up in the
field, David suddenly found himself having to report a string of real
treasures in the form of caches of Iron Age gold coins and items of Roman,
Saxon and medieval gold and silver jewellery. No less than seven of
David's finds were recorded under the Treasure Act between 1998-2004.
David also has to maintain a shelf full of trophies he is continuously
winning at the Swale, Search and Recovery Club.