Metal detection n shit

[GATS22]

Up until now I would say that my most important historical find that I stumbled across was in the back garden of my old house 20 years ago in the middle of the stix before I moved.

The house is an old grange that we completely restored and the original stones date back to over 500 years or more (couldn't find more data despite "digging" deeply into the history of the region).

The land that the grange was built on belonged to a massive vineyard which was part of the castle of Chenonceau which dates back to the 11th century. Linky wink here : http://www.famouscastles.net/list-of-fam...henonceau/

The find (see pics below) was found without a metal detector funnily enough! I was digging a new pond for my Koi and found it at around 20 cms deep at the end of my spade.

This bronze artifact is called a "Clavendier" which means basically Keyring and was worn on a belt by castle keepers or people of the religious order.

Up until now, only 3 of this type of Clavendier have been found in Europe which makes the object quite rare.

I also found 2 out of the 3 rings which were part of this artifact about 10 cms apart from each other.

The chains of course were missing, which does not surprise me as the earth is quite acidic in the area and bronze does not like acid.

Here are the pics :

Front (After restoration) :




Back (Before restoration) :




And here is an image of what it could have looked like if I found it intact :




So... I was pretty well chuffed... and still am until this day to have found this historical beauty, until I find a big fuck off pot of gold coins (I have my one and only silver coin that I stumbled across and will post when I can find it too (unless Mrs Rod has sneakily sold it that is!))

Restoration was the following :

1 : Soft natural soap cleaning without any chemical products with the help of a toothbrush

2 : Cleaning and shining up the patine with the help of a tiny pencil and nothing else.

ATTENTION : NEVER USE SCRUBBING PADS OR CHEMICAL AGENTS TO CLEAN UP AN ARTIFACT YOU MAY FIND;

This will only decrease the historical value of said object.

If you do that "I WILL FIND YOU... AND I WILL KILL YOU...

Thats all folks... For the moment

Kindest respects

Rodinus


That is Amazing.  So cool. 

I bought a detector for my son a few months ago & haven't done much with it yet.  We moved to a new area and need to find some cool places to search.  When I was about 10, I was hanging out with my Dad in the driveway (gravel) and looked down and saw what looked like a plug from an outlet box.  I picked it up and it was a Liberty dime that I still have somewhere.