Finding Roman Sites by Bathdigger

[Brianmo]

I was some what surprised at the number of people who have never found roman coins, after 12 years of detecting, I hope this information may help a few of you newbies .

Read your maps look for anything that may be roman e.g. roads, place names, finds made over time. Speak to farmers, there are always some body interested in the history of there village speak to ever body always have time to listen.

Villas is this area are found on the top, side and bottom of south facing hills the big clue water, people cannot live with out it, look for springs and rivers .

So far so good you have a roman road say 7 miles a way a valley with a south facing face, springs running down to a river start detecting around the spring in circles getting wider each time, if you start to get lead or iron mark the area then go low and slow if you are lucky to find a roman site not detected on before, don?t bother to move for the next 5 years, some years you will get nothing other times bingo.

On most roman sites look for; large stones in the hedges, large areas of black soil, a lot of lead , pottery all over the place the clues are there its up to you to find them.
On a lot of roman sites you will find Saxon just a few hundred yards away why start a new farm when there is one ready to take over?.

OK so you have done the south facing side now go over to the opposite side (north side)
Here you may be lucky and find the farm workers houses or a burial site who knows
Most important find a detector you are happy with and one you can use to many people miss so much because they don?t know how to use there detector.

So to recap: get permission
Get as much knowledge of that area from every available source
Don?t give up because you haven?t a coin in an hour
I hope this has been of some help and happy hunting