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Photos like this are useful to those members of the public (and archaeologists) who for various reasons are unlikely to attend a commercial artefact hunting event, and it would be very useful if the PAS who attend a fair number of them up and down the country would make far more photographic records of this type.
I think if we archaeologists do any kind of investigation, be it survey or excavation, whether it is research, rescue or some form of "community archaeology", we do have an obligation to document how the data are gathered, and that record forms part of the publicly accessible information about our work (which sometimes is paid for out of the public purse and always affecting the archaeological record which is everybody's heritage). I really do not see why we should be so coy about showing people what we are doing and how we are doing it. A table in a field or tent with a camera and few recording forms on it is hardly top secret military equipment...
Indeed, it seems obvious that each event like this should be the subject of an individual report by the archaeologists in attendance, and I see no reason why this should not be made public in order to further the debate about the contribution events like this and an archaeological involvement in them make to our knowledge of a region. Such a report will also be iportant to those that wish to understand the clustering of data in the PAS database at macro and micro-level. So far, sespite the fact that each year many dozens are being held, the archaeological participation in only a few rallies has resulted in the preparation of any kind of a report setting out what areas were searched and how, and what may be deduced from the record made and where the limitations of that data set may lie. This seems an obvious need in the future.
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