Cache Hunting - Discovering A Hoard of Silver Hammered Coins (Story 14)
With such a crude design, this could be the late Medieval ring. Now it was getting interesting, so I suggested to Misha to set up his White's XLT in All Metal mode in order to increase the detection depth, and to dig up all questionable signals.
I walked back to the spot where I had stopped before my break and started moving the search coil very slow. The Explorer caught a solid signal from the deep buried target.
It turned out to be some bronze relic which looked like a horse pendant decorated with a floral design, and with a rivet on its back and therefore may have been attached to leather. It also could be a belt fitting that would appear to date between the mid-16th and the late 17th centuries.
Bronze Horse Pendant or Belt Fitting, circa 16th-17th Centuries
So far, my finds had not indicated the former presence of the Medieval village. In fact, the finds were not characteristic for any settlement's spot not only because of the absence of so-called "cultural layer" - that could be explained by the annual plowing, but also because the soil did not contain any components of the cultural layer.
The cultural layer could be described as the upper 9-15 inches of soil which is usually darker than the soil below it, and littered with brick and pottery fragments, china shards, pieces of charcoal, tool fragments and iron nails - its components. Of course, if the field had been plowed for years, the cultural layer would be long destroyed, but the components of which it was comprised would be always present in soil.
Certainly the finds pointed out to people's activity that took place here in the past. It was also possible that we were metal detecting at the outskirts of some village that surrounded the Lutheran Kirk and disappeared under the sand pit as well.
While I was trying to find all the good answers to "why, when and where," Misha advanced further to the field's center. A few moments later, he shouted something and then started walking fast towards me, smile on his face, and holding something in his closed fist.
Misha approached me and said: "Guess what have I just found?" I started guessing with the usual routine: "A gold Russian Imperial coin, the 17th century Swedish silver coin, a silver rouble of the Tsar Peter The Great, the 18th century silver rouble of Tsarina Catherine II?.."
"No, all was wrong!" - Misha said and opened his fist. I was instantly excited by his find - a silver hammered coin, the wire money type depicting a horseman holding a spear, in great condition, in this field!
Early Russian Silver Hammered Coin Called a "Fish Scale" Was Found
After we deciphered the inscription on the coin's reverse, we realized that the 1600's time barrier had just been crossed, and we have got a chance to discover a treasure!
1 Kopeck Minted Under the Rule of Tsar Ivan IV Vasiljevich (Ivan The Terrible), circa 1533-1547
I instructed Misha to start scanning slowly around the spot, where he had just dug up the hammered coin, in a tight circular pattern. If there was a "coin-spread" (you can read more about it here), more hammered coins would be detected at this patch, basically right on the surface. "Go get the hot spot!" - I said to my buddy.
I myself changed my searching path and began metal detecting towards Misha's spot. I received a strong coin-signal, dug up a coin-like object and first thought that I got a very old copper coin.
A Coin-Like Object
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