The story of one of my most significant finds I have ever made. But first a little about myself and the hobby.
Born and raised in a small village in Ontario, Canada I never really had much interest in ancient history or any history for that matter.
Then I moved to Europe and I found myself surrounded by history and fascinating castles, ruins and ancient landmarks. My sister thought that was cool so she bought me a Bounty Hunter metal detector for Christmas of 2008. Two years later I finally unboxed the detector and decided to give it a go in a local field in my village in the Czech Republic. After finding some WWI and WWII relics I was hooked. Within two weeks I was on-line searching for a high end metal detector. No idea why or how but I found the Minelab Explorer SE Pro and though that would do just fine. Well I was wrong, lol. It did what it supposed to do and I loved it and found loads more of artifacts but as a male and a bit of a techie I thought to myself I must have the next up model E-trac. I ordered a second hand E-trac and had it delivered to a friend in the UK as I was going to meet him at the Minelabowners rally and the Weekend Wanderers rally.
Day two of the WW rally and my E-trac found me my first cut quarter hammered. I was over the moon and just grinning from ear to ear when not two minutes later the next signal was a Celtic gold quarter stator of Tasciovanus.
From there I could go on and on but I want to tell you about my most significant find. I was invited for the second time to participate in a rally held in the town of Vinkovci Croatia. This was not to be the usually rally where the good fields are determined and you just show up and detect and find goodies that you put in your pocket and take home. This rally was in co-operation with the museum and the focus of the rally was to search large areas of land and find the hot spots so the Ministry of Culture and the Museum could then decide if the areas should be protected. Once a hot spot was found we could search for all the goodies and hand them into the museum. From what I understand metal detecting in Croatia in allowed however you are forbidden to dig for artifacts.
During the week long even I have many nice finds such as Celtic coins, a Greek coin that was used by the Romans, Medieval hammered silver coins and loads of Roman coins and brooches.
On one particular field we found a hot spot and as I now used a CTX 3030 I was plotting my geo hunts and find points. I kept wanting to back to that field because every time I looked at my hunts on Xchange2 I saw the concentration of finds in that one area 100 x 100 meters. So on the Thursday afternoon I convinced two friends to go back to that field. I turned my detector on and found one of the “find points” in that area and followed the GPS to the exact spot. I found a few Roman coins and other bits and then WOW,out popped a silver "Roman Seal Matrix". This is a significant find for the museum as it appears to have been from a family and the details will provide some insight as to who they were and their levels and titles of magistrates . The matrix has a man , woman and child with lettering around the outside. I am happy to have shared my story and experience and I hope you enjoyed it.
May future generations enjoy what myself and other detecting enthusiasts have done for the museum of Vinkovci,Croatia. Regards,
Scott Ellis - Jihocesky Kraj, Czech Republic
