Europe Coin Depth

I've been reading the last few days about sink rate, coin depth etc. Some really good info on this forum and Tom's articles. I'm curious when folks find roman coins in europe are they in ground that has been plowed only? Or are there still large numbers of hundred years old coins that just have not sunk out of range.

I've only ever found roman coins on ploughed land, my most recent roman was on land that was ploughed 14 years ago and around down at five inches.

Never found roman on pasture.

Thanks for the quick reply, this makes the most sense...

All of my Roman (and Greek) coins were found in flipped/tilled dirt. One particular field appeared to have not been tilled..... and the Roman coins were approx 5.5"-to-fringe depth. Later........... learned the field was tilled 38 years prior to my detecting.

That's one of the problems - how do you know what's happened to the land over thousands of years? Here in the U.K, a lot of land that was 'uncultivated' was pressed into service as agricultural land during WWII, but was later returned to grazing pasture land.
But if you are after extreme examples, I've found Roman coins at 4 - 6 inches on land that has probably never been ploughed (animal grazing only), and I've recovered a Medieval coin (1300's) from 1 inch down in undisturbed woodland, yet in the general vicinity, spent shotgun cartridges of 1880 - 1950 vintage can be found at 8 - 10 inches.
You have to consider the effects of tree roots, rabbit/badger/deer etc digging holes, plus weather effects, like water erosion, all contribute their bit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2014 09:24PM by Pimento.

I have only found a handfull of hammered coins. The deepest, a large silver from 1678 was like new and around 8" deep (With the Omega 8000 - a softer hit). Very close to an old bombed out castle. I know in the past they farmed there but it has been pasture in recent times.
I found a few more in the area, but not large ones. I don't hunt tilled though...

Over here in the US I found 2 Barber quarters in the same area in the middle of a very old field in a park. 1 of them was less than a inch the other was less than 3".
It didn't make a bit of sense as the the field is used heavily.

Aaron

they can be just about any depth really , a hoard of roman gold coins found a few years ago on scrub land that hadnt been plowed were not very deep at all and the standard machine found them all . another very rare roman gold coin was also not very deep on plowed land .

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

i constantly read articles about very ancient finds being just a few inches below the surface on pasture land that may or may not have been plowed ,it defies belief that they havent sunk deeper over the centuries by cause of rain or worms etc



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2014 03:34PM by diggers.

The Sandridge (St.Albans) hoard had allegedly been disturbed by ploughing. It was scattered, I recall.

i recall it was on scrubland ,the article says woodland though

the area had been done by others who found nowt

quote
The novice revealed he had bought a basic detector from a local shop and headed straight out to woods to try his new gadget.

His initial finds included a spoon and halfpenny piece but then the machine started bleeping to indicate metal some way beneath the ground.

After digging down around seven inches he unearthed the first of 55 ‘solidi’ – gold coins – dating back more than 1,600 years.

Read more: [www.dailymail.co.uk]
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I guess that few people actually know the details about the find or findspot, so what you read in the press has to be interpreted with care. But supposing it was ploughed in WW2, but not since - there could be 60 year old mature trees growing there now. And as for why they were not found by others, if the area was near modern housing, it could well have a lot of trash like bottle-tops, cans, ringpulls, plus shotgun cartridges & airgun pellets galore. That would put off plenty of amateurs, I'm sure.
Plus, they aren't large coins, and at 7 inches probably don't give the greatest signal. No significant halo effect either, of course.