Loading…
27
Dropped a Roman coin in the trench and our total station saved the day in Bath
Last month I was helping out on a dig near Bath and right as I pulled a 4th century coin out of the spoil, my hands were muddy and it slipped straight into the grass. We had already recorded the grid square but not the exact spot, so I grabbed the total station and shot the two corners of the hole to triangulate where it landed. Took about 20 minutes of crawling around on my knees, but we found it about a foot away, sitting in a leaf pile. Ended up logging it with the exact coordinates, and the site lead said that was the cleanest recovery note she had seen all season. Has anyone else had a small find go flying, and did your survey gear actually help you pin it back down?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
hall.nina28d ago
Oh sure, just casually whip out the total station to find a coin, meanwhile I once spent 30 mins looking for a flint flake that turned out to be stuck to my boot the whole time. That triangulation move is some next level surveying flex, like you were doing math to beat the grass at its own game. The site lead praising your note is the real win though, clean paperwork in the field is rarer than Roman gold half the time. I've lost a couple tiny finds to the void myself, usually they just vanish into the dirt gods and never come back. Good on you for actually getting it pinned down instead of writing "misc small find, location unknown" and calling it a day.
3