Myself and Gordon Heritage left the U.K. at around 8:00pm on Friday and drove 1,250 miles in a little under 24 hours. Having two drivers really does cut the travelling time down even if Gordon does find my snoring a huge distraction whilst he takes his turn at the wheel!
Our mission is to follow up on a hoard of mediaeval silver coins. The original hoard was found by Steve Gaunt who is our host, contact and chief protector on this trip. The hoard comprises of coins of King Sigismund and Queen Maria. It sounds a simple mission but in reality it involves a lot of permissions. Due to the cultural laws in Croatia there were hoops that we had to “jump through” in order for this trip to go ahead. First, we needed an authorisation from the Croatian Ministry of Culture for us to search for items of historical or cultural importance. Second we needed a permit from the Ministry of agriculture who are the land owner.
Third, we need to have the Vinkovci Town Council to give us permission to work for them under the control of the Museum. Fourth, we need the museum to accept and authorise us to act on their behalf in the search and excavation of the hoard.
All of these permissions have to be in place or we go to jail. It really is that simple. Croatia is very protective of its cultural heritage.
So, a little bit more about the hoard we are excavating:
Steve Gaunt came across the hoard by chance whilst searching for evidence of a deserted mediaeval village. He recovered a little over 200 coins from this hoard, it is scattered by the plough over an area of around 20m x 4m. When Gordon and I were here in November 2013 we were asked by the Museum to have a look at the site to see if we could find any more of this hoard using the CTX3030. We were happy to do this and in about 90 minutes of searching we added 52 more coins to Vinkovci museum’s collection from what they thought was a searched out site. They were quite amazed that we were able to find so many coins – as said; they thought everything had been found. Following this we were invited to return to assist the Museum to excavate the site. That’s what this trip is for, an opportunity of a lifetime.
Sunday was a day for recuperating from the journey. In the morning we sat in the sun, drank coffee and generally chilled out. It was a welcome break. Around one o’clock we were joined by Steve and given some disastrous news: the Farmer whose crop was on the field had rescinded his permission for the excavation and no amount of pleading, reasoning or promises of financial reinstatement for the crop we would damage would change his mind.
This news hit us like a ton of bricks. We were 1,244 miles from home, all the relevant governmental permissions had been obtained and the one person who could scupper our plans had done just that. Steve told us of another hoard site that we could search. The landowner had been approached and permission granted. It wasn’t such a big hoard but it was a hoard and we could search it.
Steve took us to the proposed site. It was quite worrying to see signs on the land warning of land-mines, parked up a short distance away was a mine clearing machine. Did we really want to be doing this? What the heck, we’re here now, we may as well. Anyway, Steve fought in the Homeland war and was injured by a landmine. If he wasn’t worried then it must be safe!
We walked the hoard site looking for signs of the coins and any container they may have been in. We were surprised to find four coins lying on the surface, all of Sigismund and Maria. We were in the right place.
Tomorrow we search the archaeologists dig and we see what comes up.
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