metal detectorists are mostly law abiding decent people from all walks of life who take their hobby very seriously. the club i belong to work very closely with the p.a.s and archaeologists scanning their spoil heaps for them at our expense and time, last dig was binchester which lasted a month.My ears pricked up as I remembered the name Binchester as having cropped up in a case study I was looking into a while back, and also the dig mentioned is run by Dave Petts and is covered by a blog. Oddly enough the contribution of the “local metal detecting club” is mentioned in only one post on that blog, so we are none the wiser what exactly was achieved in having them there. But anyway, good for them. Here’s the Durham County Council blurb on the dig:
Binchester excavation project 2009-2014 is a new programme of excavation which started in June 2009. This is a joint project with our partners at Durham University; Stanford University (California), and the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Northumberland and Durham. Part of the project will include a phase of public excavation in late June through to the middle of July.What has been happening on outlying areas of this complex is however another case of metal detector enabled portable antiquity asset-stripping from a known site, something I have been looking into. It turns out that a commercial metal detecting rally was held in October 1999 on land which included an area of the Roman vicus attached to the Roman fort at Binchester. A search of the PAS database seems (one can never be sure these days) to reveal that none of these finds were entered on the PAS database (in 1999 the PAS covered only a limited number of counties and Durham was not among them). The Treasure Reports show however that metal detecting continues to take place here. The 2003 Treasure Report (Record T270, Page 56) features a gold (Roman?) finger ring found in May 2001 by Mr K Leach whilst searching with a metal detector in a field adjacent to the remains of the Roman fort of Vinovium.
Obviously then, the landowner of fields adjacent to the scheduled site sees nothing wrong with allowing artefact hunters to strip the area of any interesting metal collectables. Finds from “near Binchester” found by metal detecting in 2006-9 are also illustrated on the UKDFD. None are reported anywhere else.
One wonders just how many times the finds-rich fields in the vicinity of this scheduled site have been targetted by metal detector users (with or without the permission of the landowner) and what has been taken with no record made whatsoever.
The mere fact that metal detectorists "come from all walks of life" and “take their hobby very seriously” and in whatever they do are mostly "law abiding decent people" really is beside the point. The issue is not how nice they are, but what is happening to the archaeological record of Britain as a result of current UK polices towards the hobby of these nice people. Some of them work very closely with the PAS but then not all do, and - what is significant is - that even at the level of the vicinity of a single site as here, we do not know to what extent compliance matches non-compliance. We have no way of controlling what information is lost in the course of this activity stretching now over several years.
The fact that some nice guys went over the 2009 Binchester excavation spoilheaps with metal detectors in no way relates to what nice guys are doing with metal detectors to the archaeological evidence in the fields over the fence. Both groups however want to be treated as archaeology's partners, no matter what is happening out there in the fields.
“norfolk for me takes some beating, brancaster best place i have ever been, 50 plus roman coins been the norm” http://www.detectorist.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27828 (that’s detector.co “setting the standards”) I wonder if Mr Groundhog means the SCHEDULED Roman fort site at Brancaster? Certainly there are lots of coins there, totally illegal though to take them away unless he’s got a Scheduled Monument Consent.
ReplyDeleteStill, I am sure a forum member will just clariy that for him.
Interesting post. I never really thought about the ramifications of people using metal detectors to search through historic sites. I can see why official channels would want to preserve the record, but I can also see why individuals would want to engage in this kind of activity. It would be cool, for example, to be the one to dig up King John's treasure at the Wash. It seems like there should be some permit mechanism to allow people to search, and use metal detectors. It seems to me this could pay for much additional research as well as enforcement of rules governing searches for antiquities.
ReplyDeleteNear as I can figure, the actual use of metal detectors does not appear to be a hazard to the antiquities themselves. It seems like club members could be trained in archeological techniques etc. and both sides of this issue could be gratified.
"the actual use of metal detectors does not appear to be a hazard to the antiquities themselves",
ReplyDeleteBut keeping "the antiquities themselves" is not the problem from the archaeological point of view. Just "finding things" is not at all what archaeology is about - despite what the PAS seems to be letting people in the UK think.
Anyway what about the guys that go across a field with an archaeological site in it, picking out what they want for their own collections or sale, but chucking the rest (including archaeological artefacts which are not in their opinion so "collectable") into a carrier bag which is dumped in a skip or sold for scrap? This is something that is frequently ignored by the "why not let them go and dig it all up now" supporters of artefact collecting.
As you say, if this activity was carried out using archaeological methods, and the items collected as archaeological evidence rather than as collectables, there would be less of a problem.
The truth is though that this archaeological "partnership" is not really with would-be archaeologists, but would-be trophy collectors, the two are quite separate things and its only in the imagination of the fluffy bunny brigade that they are the same.
There is a HUGE amount of attitude-changing in the collecting community that has to take place before we can talk of any kind of "partnership" in this regard. Go and have a look what collectors themselves are saying and doing to see how far off that might be - by whch time of course most of the archaeological sites in the UK (or wherever) will have been irreparably damaged.
Thanks for the response, Paul. As you say, I think the key here is education.
ReplyDelete