Metal Detecting, Finds Drawing & Photography

For our June session we teamed up with Duncan Slarke, Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme. He began the session by telling us about his work, and how he became a FLO instead of a digger! Then he taught us how to identify different metals - for example whether they are magnetic and therefore contain iron, or whether they have a greenish tinge and are some sort of copper alloy.

He showed us lots of pictures of beautiful items that have been found by metal detectorists across the Country - as well as a distribution map of all the finds in England in and Wales that have been logged as part of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. There were relatively few from Wales and lots from the Isle of Wight for example - which reflected the number of metal detectorists operating in these areas. Obviously people in and visitors to, Wales prefer to go hill walking rather than detecting! We also talked about the distribution of material reflecting trends in where people chose to live in the past - such as river valleys etc.

We then used a sample of finds from Birmingham Archaeology to learn how to draw artefacts at a scale of 1:1 which means at their true life size. We copied their outlines, and then put in details of decoration as well as wear from the object being used and things such as staining which had happened to the artefact after it had been dropped or discarded and ended up in the ground.

Once we had drawn and described our artefacts we learned how to photograph them. We found out that changing the background colour, for example, could improve the look of the object and make it stand out more. By moving the artefact around as well as the lighting we took some great shots - and these and all the paperwork that we produced during the session will be used as part of our application for YAYA!

We would like to say a BIG thank you to Duncan for a really BRILLIANT session!

Copyright © 2004 Birmingham's Young Archaeologists Club.
All rights reserved.