1066 Battle of Hastings & a Dowser

[MIJ]

This is one of our metal detecting club projects that we are currently working on.

Nick Austin has spent 24 years researching what he thinks is the real 1066 Battle of Hastings site and has also written a book on his findings called Secrets the Norman Invasion.

Hear is a video of our first detecting survey at Crowhurst, the Nick Austin 1066 Battle of Hastings “alternative site”

Lots of items where found but no Saxon or Norman items.

The best part of the day was Nick Austin dowsing and finding the “Crossbow” that he had previously dowsed 14 years earlier, and he found it seemingly with no trouble at all “wow I thought that was amazing” he came down right on top of the black plastic bin-liner that he covered it up with 14 years ago, it was 80 cm deep and in a fairly big field.

And believe me the “home made dowsing rods” he was using where basically white plastic covered wire coat hangers with a turned up loop on the ends, I certainly have never seen any like it before.

All I can say is “seeing is believing” I have played about with dowsing rods quit a bit, but he maid it look so easy.

Hear is the video Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLy18fTlsE

[J_Player]

Originally Posted by MIJ

This is one of our metal detecting club projects that we are currently working on.

Nick Austin has spent 24 years researching what he thinks is the real 1066 Battle of Hastings site and has also written a book on his findings called Secrets the Norman Invasion.

Hear is a video of our first detecting survey at Crowhurst, the Nick Austin 1066 Battle of Hastings “alternative site”

Lots of items where found but no Saxon or Norman items.

The best part of the day was Nick Austin dowsing and finding the “Crossbow” that he had previously dowsed 14 years earlier, and he found it seemingly with no trouble at all “wow I thought that was amazing” he came down right on top of the black plastic bin-liner that he covered it up with 14 years ago, it was 80 cm deep and in a fairly big field.

And believe me the “home made dowsing rods” he was using where basically white plastic covered wire coat hangers with a turned up loop on the ends, I certainly have never seen any like it before.

All I can say is “seeing is believing” I have played about with dowsing rods quit a bit, but he maid it look so easy.

Hear is the video Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLy18fTlsE

Hi MIJ,
This is one of the very best ameteur treasure hunting documentary films I have seen made.
Other treasure hunters should watch and take notes.
The filming and camera work was excellent, and they took a good amount of time to interview the treasure hunters to tell exactly what they were doing in this treasure field.
Anyone watching has a very good idea of exactly what was going on, and there are none of the usual questions we have after watching this kind of film...
Questions like "how deep", or "where was the field located" or "what was that thing they dug up"?

This seems a very good local club you have.
I was impressed at the research that was done before they went on this treasure hunt.
It seems that Nick Austin had a fairly clear idea of exactly how the battle went, with some good clues of where to look for artifacts.
This is the kind of research that is more important than any treasure hunting tool you can take into a field, other than a shovel.

About the dowsing...
I see the dowsing part starts at 18:35.
This video shows he does his dowsing and marks a spot to dig a hole.
The hole is dug and they recover a small piece of black plastic bag from maybe a foot deep.
He says he buried the plastic bag there years ago when he first dug the hole at a location where he thought there may be a crossbow buried.
From what he says, it seems he never did find a crossbow or any other object buried in that hole.
But before he filled the dirt back into the hole, he put a piece of plastic bag at the bottom to mark the place.
His idea was that he could return and dowse the area again to find the plastic he left buried years ago.
Then, when he finds the same hole he dug previously, he can dig deeper to find the suspected crossbow.
During both times when they dug at this particular hole, he never found any artifacts.
The dowsing he demonstrated was to locate and recover a piece of plastic bag that he buried years ago at a place where he suspects there may be a crossbow buried deeper.
But he never dug deeper to find a crossbow.

Do I understand the dowsing explanation correctly?


Best wishes,
J_P

[MIJ]

Originally Posted by J_Player

Hi MIJ,
This is one of the very best ameteur treasure hunting documentary films I have seen made.
Other treasure hunters should watch and take notes.
The filming and camera work was excellent, and they took a good amount of time to interview the treasure hunters to tell exactly what they were doing in this treasure field.
Anyone watching has a very good idea of exactly what was going on, and there are none of the usual questions we have after watching this kind of film...
Questions like "how deep", or "where was the field located" or "what was that thing they dug up"?

This seems a very good local club you have.
I was impressed at the research that was done before they went on this treasure hunt.
It seems that Nick Austin had a fairly clear idea of exactly how the battle went, with some good clues of where to look for artifacts.
This is the kind of research that is more important than any treasure hunting tool you can take into a field, other than a shovel.

About the dowsing...
I see the dowsing part starts at 18:35.
This video shows he does his dowsing and marks a spot to dig a hole.
The hole is dug and they recover a small piece of black plastic bag from maybe a foot deep.
He says he buried the plastic bag there years ago when he first dug the hole at a location where he thought there may be a crossbow buried.
From what he says, it seems he never did find a crossbow or any other object buried in that hole.
But before he filled the dirt back into the hole, he put a piece of plastic bag at the bottom to mark the place.
His idea was that he could return and dowse the area again to find the plastic he left buried years ago.
Then, when he finds the same hole he dug previously, he can dig deeper to find the suspected crossbow.
During both times when they dug at this particular hole, he never found any artifacts.
The dowsing he demonstrated was to locate and recover a piece of plastic bag that he buried years ago at a place where he suspects there may be a crossbow buried deeper.
But he never dug deeper to find a crossbow.

Do I understand the dowsing explanation correctly?


Best wishes,
J_P

Hi J P

Yes all the credit for the camera work and interviews must go to Philip Day who is covering the story of Nick Austin; Philip is a world renowned health researcher and award wining author, his videos are linked to the Battle site video on youtube, well worth looking at he is also a great chap.

With reference to our club, fortunately we have a very good local detecting club with about forty dedicated members I have been the chairman for about 15 years, we are also affiliated to sister club called IHRG “Independent Historical Research Group” and carry out small archaeology research and digs in our areas.

Nick Austin needs to find hard proof of the battle site and this is why we offered to help him.

Battle Abbey about 4 miles away from where we where searching is the claimed battle site “Senlac Hill”, this is open to the public and is run by English Heritage, in 200 years there has never been any evidence found to indicate a battle on this site.

About the dowsing part you mentioned, Nick Austin did actually find the remains of a Crossbow 14 years ago at 80cm deep when dowsing, and has photographic and documentary evidence of the bow in his book, the bow was in a state of decomposition with only the imprint/shape of the bow in the ground showing where the “iron foot ring” used for tensioning the string had also rusted away.

There was no metallic signal coming from the bow and was found only through dowsing.

Originally 14 year ago he back filled the hole and put a black bin liner over it about 1 ft under the turf, in the video he dowsed the exact spot of the bow and started excavating and started to find small pieces of the decomposing bin liner, it was late afternoon and I said to Nick I think it would be better not to gig it all out and expose it to the elements, because it would be better to have an expert Archaeologists to do the job, when there would be more time, we also put a couple of coins in to make it easer to find next time.

He wasn’t dowsing for the black plastic bag, he was dowsing for the Crossbow that he had previously found.

I hope that is all clear I’m pleased you like the story so far hopefully I will be putting up more videos over the coming year, and hopefully with some real battle field finds like arrowheads, crossbow bolts, chain mail, clothing fasteners, spear heads, dagger chaps, horseshoes, heraldic pendants, possible personal losses like finger rings or brooches etc.

Regards

[Morgan]

Originally Posted by MIJ

Hi J P

Yes all the credit for the camera work and interviews must go to Philip Day who is covering the story of Nick Austin; Philip is a world renowned health researcher and award wining author, his videos are linked to the Battle site video on youtube, well worth looking at he is also a great chap.

With reference to our club, fortunately we have a very good local detecting club with about forty dedicated members I have been the chairman for about 15 years, we are also affiliated to sister club called IHRG “Independent Historical Research Group” and carry out small archaeology research and digs in our areas.

Nick Austin needs to find hard proof of the battle site and this is why we offered to help him.

Battle Abbey about 4 miles away from where we where searching is the claimed battle site “Senlac Hill”, this is open to the public and is run by English Heritage, in 200 years there has never been any evidence found to indicate a battle on this site.

About the dowsing part you mentioned, Nick Austin did actually find the remains of a Crossbow 14 years ago at 80cm deep when dowsing, and has photographic and documentary evidence of the bow in his book, the bow was in a state of decomposition with only the imprint/shape of the bow in the ground showing where the “iron foot ring” used for tensioning the string had also rusted away.

There was no metallic signal coming from the bow and was found only through dowsing.

Originally 14 year ago he back filled the hole and put a black bin liner over it about 1 ft under the turf, in the video he dowsed the exact spot of the bow and started excavating and started to find small pieces of the decomposing bin liner, it was late afternoon and I said to Nick I think it would be better not to gig it all out and expose it to the elements, because it would be better to have an expert Archaeologists to do the job, when there would be more time, we also put a couple of coins in to make it easer to find next time.

He wasn’t dowsing for the black plastic bag, he was dowsing for the Crossbow that he had previously found.

I hope that is all clear I’m pleased you like the story so far hopefully I will be putting up more videos over the coming year, and hopefully with some real battle field finds like arrowheads, crossbow bolts, chain mail, clothing fasteners, spear heads, dagger chaps, horseshoes, heraldic pendants, possible personal losses like finger rings or brooches etc.

Regards

yes,maybe one PDK-2 can help in this task

[J_Player]

Originally Posted by Morgan

yes,maybe one PDK-2 can help in this task

I think so too.
We can see how many things they dug from this field when using only metal detectors and dowsing... all buried for a long time.

This is a good place to make tests with PDK and other LRL tests to see what is found at locations where they beep.
Maybe they will find something at a deeper depth than was found when using other metal detectors.
Also it would be good to try a different field that was hot hunted by metal detectors, so there will be more things to find.
It will be important to make a circle on the ground to show the locatioin where the PDK locates.. maybe a large circle if it does not pinpoint.
Then after the PDK and other LRLs make their tests to find any buried metals inside the circles that show where they detected, the metal detectors can come to see if they find anything that the LRLs did not find outside of these circles.


Best wishes,
J_P

[MIJ]

Originally Posted by J_Player

I think so too.
We can see how many things they dug from this field when using only metal detectors and dowsing... all buried for a long time.

This is a good place to make tests with PDK and other LRL tests to see what is found at locations where they beep.
Maybe they will find something at a deeper depth than was found when using other metal detectors.
Also it would be good to try a different field that was hot hunted by metal detectors, so there will be more things to find.
It will be important to make a circle on the ground to show the locatioin where the PDK locates.. maybe a large circle if it does not pinpoint.
Then after the PDK and other LRLs make their tests to find any buried metals inside the circles that show where they detected, the metal detectors can come to see if they find anything that the LRLs did not find outside of these circles.


Best wishes,
J_P

J P

Yes I think you are right I believe that there are possibly a lot of deeper targets on these battle field areas.

I’m a firm believer in using as many different tools as possible to find treasures/artefacts etc; it increases your chances greatly.

There are over 500 acres still to search on this battle site, one interesting area is where the Normans landed there boats in a inlet bay, and apparently banked them over with soil, so the Norman army could not get back out to sea or run away, there are reputed to be possibly over three hundred boats, this is another area that Nick Austin dowsed he believes that he found remains of a boat, photographic and documentary evidence is also in Nicks book.

[MIJ]

Originally Posted by Morgan

yes,maybe one PDK-2 can help in this task

Morgan,

Yes I think your PDK 2 would be able to go where other detecting tools can’t areas like- bush and shrubs that you can’t detect easily also thick woodland and hedgerows, also it will be able to detect much deeper than conventional detectors.
It would certainly be great tool for this project, especially as you have had such good reports from tests so far.