Digging up Treasures of the Past: Another "How not To"

Another bit of "yank-the-artefact-out-before-you've-got-the-earth-off" digging this time not by British archaeologists, but a Belgian metal detectorist.

fouille casque allemand Załadowane przez: chinchilla1980.

"Trouvaille d un casque allemand en fouille dans les Ardennes belge 15-3-2008".

That's what it says. Well, we can see it is an M44, the correct type for the date of the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. It is in remarkably good condition after being "buried in the sandy soil" for 64 years - which is just as well as pulling it out like that from a narrow hole if it had not been could have led to it breaking.

But then one wonders why there are leaves and no matted roots inside the (dry) helmet, where the lining is and why it has no rivets if it's a battlefield find. This object seems to me to have been planted and the "excavation" staged. Sadly, one cannot say the same about the British archaeologists' digging seen in a recent film showing much the same kind of treatment of some portable antiquities.

This helmet-digging video brings us back to the problem that will not go away, that the findspots and circumstances of discovery of items is only where the artefact hunter claims. The helmet in this film could have been bought on eBay and the collector then claimed he'd dug it up somewhere else making it more easily disposed of.* A Treasure item declared by a metal detectorist in the UK could be legitimised by claiming it was found somewhere else than its true findspot, in order to claim the full market value reward. The current system can obviously be abused by the less scrupulous detector user, the question is to what extent it is, and what can be done to prevent it?

* This helmet does not look dug-up at all. In Poland for example after the War they were used in many farms as metal bowls - precisely with the liners removed. Quite often they were used for feeding chickens. Many just sat unused in a corner of barns. Collectors drove around the farms buying them up, restoring them (repainting them, putting fake liners and straps in) and then selling them on western markets at a large profit.