DR CHAPTER about the author 31/8/06 16:42 Page 1
About the Author
D
avid Villanueva was born in Birmingham in
1951 and grew up in the Midlands. In the
early 1970s his mother bought him a copy
of Ted Fletcher's book A Fortune under
Your Feet, which inspired him to buy a metal detector
- a Goldfinger BFO.The performance was very poor by
current standards but it did find coins and David
became hooked. A few months later he upgraded to a
deeper-seeking machine and became very fond of
searching beaches, which were very productive of
modern coins and jewellery at the time. In those early
days David also took an interest in other forms of
treasure hunting including dump digging, SCUBA
diving, and gold panning.
Photo: Brian Green
Following a move to Whitstable in Kent, David
(with kind permission
took to nearby beaches with his trusty old Pulsedec,
Whitstable Times).
but quickly found that the machine was not well-
suited to local conditions - the Pulsedec had no
discrimination and there being plenty of iron around. productive sites to search and to write about in
He changed to a locally produced C-Scope 1220B, Treasure Hunting.
which worked well on the drier parts of the beaches,
and this encouraged him to try out some inland sites. Continually delving into local history and follow-
ing up his research in the field, David suddenly found
He joined a metal detecting club and also gained himself having to report a string of real treasures in the
permission to search a small farm, making all sorts of form of caches of Iron Age gold coins and items of
finds that previously he had only read about in Trea- Roman, Saxon and medieval gold and silver jewellery.
sure Hunting (hammered silver coins, for instance). No less than seven of David's finds were recorded
under the Treasure Act between 1998-2004. David also
Having long had a keen interest in history David has to maintain a shelf full of trophies he is continu-
started researching his locality, which led to more ously winning at the Swale Search and Recovery Club.
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