Showerthought: I thought the guy with the dowsing rods near a dig in Wiltshire was full of it, then he found a Roman well | Archaeology Discoveries

Wade Schmidt · 2026-10-09T19:05:04.481957+00:00

Back in 2019 I was on a small dig outside Devizes in Wiltshire, mostly just field walking and recording sherds, and this older local guy kept showing up with two bent copper rods. I flat out laughed about it with the students. We had spent four days gridding a paddock and found nothing but nail heads and a couple of Georgian pennies. Then he walked a line about 30 meters from our trench, the rods crossed, and he said "there's a shaft here, about six feet down." We dug a test pit there mostly to shut him up. At 1.8 meters we hit a stone lining and pulled up a bucket, a bit of rope, and pottery that our supervisor dated to the 2nd century. I still think dowsing is nonsense on paper, groundwater is everywhere and people read the ground with their feet without knowing it. But I also think he had walked that land for 40 years and his body knew where the old wet spots were, and the rods were just his way of pointing at it. Has anyone else seen a hobbyist call a feature that the survey gear missed?

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Showerthought: I thought the guy with the dowsing rods near a dig in Wiltshire was full of it, then he found a Roman well | Archaeology Discoveries - Pinecone Attack