Found a Roman coin in a field near the village where I grew up last October

I was metal detecting with my uncle on his farm when we pulled up this little bronze coin that turned out to be from 300 AD, and now I'm wondering if anyone knows how to tell if there's more stuff buried nearby without spending a fortune on ground-penetrating radar.

2 comments

2 Comments

the_john6d ago

300 AD though. That's Emperor Constantine era stuff, before he got all serious about Christianity. You pulled a coin out of the ground that somebody was probably using to buy bread when the Roman Empire was still running things in Britain. I'd be marking that spot with a GPS and going over it again with my detector set on iron mode to look for nails or broken pottery, those are usually good signs of an old settlement. If you find a bunch of random pottery shards mixed in with the coins, you might be onto a proper site.

hugo_hayes6d ago

Wait, you're telling me that's an actual Roman coin from 300 AD and not some replica that got dropped by a reenactor? I've been watching way too many episodes of that detectorist show and now I'm half convinced every old coin is a fake.