The Roman relics include two pots containing hundreds of silver coins stamped with the face of the Emperor Hadrian – the man behind the Roman Wall. [...] It is thought the coins may have been buried during a battle, or some other such period of upheaval in the region which, like many parts of Northern England, is rich in Roman history.[...] .“We haven’t found out exactly how much they will be worth but it’s going to run into the thousands, there’s no doubt about that.”Yeah, I'll bet, especially on the US market. There are however two videos made by one "Spartyguss" which show these guys in action. Now at what time did the idea to stop digging a little tiny narrow hole and hoiking the stuff out give way to "hang on guys, the Treasure Act Code of Practice says we should call in the professionals and not try to dig it out ourselves"? At what stage? Well, I listened very carefully but actually could not hear it at all, not even when they thought they had a delicate glass vessel in the area where they were beeping and grubing. We heard a lot of other things mind you.
[By the way, these videos can be used in an archaeological party for a drinking game, you take a swig every time you hear the word "oonbelievable" or an expletive].
You Tube video: UK METAL DETECTING FANTASTIC!!! ROMAN SILVER COIN HOARD FOUND IN 2 POTS BY BLAYDON M/D CLUB
and UK METAL DETECTING ROMAN SILVER COIN HOARD FOUND IN 2 POTS BY BLAYDON M/D CLUB part 2:
And some comments:
"Exceptional, Congratulations. You bloody bastards have all the luck...LOL!!! "
"Great, find of dreams hope theres a gold one in there as well !"
"looking forward to seeing that all cleaned up proper . Once in a lifetime .... maybe ...lol Well done !!"
"Bloody brilliant".
"well done lads, what a buzz it must of bean for you all that day....Congrats".
"amazing, where was that field again?lol"
I would like to say I find it "oonbelievable" that there seems to be no PAS reaction to what that video shows to all of the British public (the world actually) goes on out in the archaeological landscape of Britain's countryside. The silence is pretty telling isn't it? But actually although I am disappointed, I am no longer surprised that the PAS, Britain's "largest archaeological outreach" project does not stand up for archaeology in the face of this sort of behaviour from its artefact-gobbling "partners". The rest of us however can ask ourselves whether this really is the sort of rifling the buried archaeological resource that all that public money is going towards to support and encourage? The fact that there was a "hoard" there was known from the moment the guy with the camera got there to record this fiasco for all to see. Now we are getting such a lot of them comiog up each year, placing a severe financial drain on the public purse, should not actually the rewards be being cut if the Treasure Act Code of Practice continues to be ignored by finders? I bet it will not in this case, even though there is plenty of good video evidence why it should be. "Oonbelievable".
Now, when will the PAS be getting there to find out what was just off the edge of that tiny little hole? What first-rate archaeological fieldwork project were they able to initiate given their present cash-strapped state as an adequate response to this discovery? Can we see some photos (or better still a PAS video) of the archaeological response?
13 comments:
After visiting England many times it is my opinion that UK archeologists are an elitist bunch of idiots.
Your main concern is that a postman or a bus driver might trump you in finds. I once witnessed a state funded excavation in the north of England where the top three feet of soil was trucked off to the local rubbish dump. The local metal detectorists went to the dump and found several thousand coins and artifacts. One find was a bronze bust of Mars. All of these finds were turnd in to the local museum.
The director of the dig tried to ban the detectorists from the rubbish dump. A court order stopped this from happening. After the dig the director was pictured in the national press holding the bust of Mars. Go figure!!!
Name of the site please where a metre of soil was machined off? The director?
The point is David that this is not just about finding "glittery things" which of course any idiot with eyes and hands can do. The point is collecting archaeological information from such finds in a form that is useable for understanding the past as a whole, rather than just what the writing and pictures on the contextless coins tell us.
In the same way, a crime scene should be examined by a police forensics team (who of course also can mess up the investigation too - errare humanum est) rather than an untrained amateur slueth with a do-it-yourself private detective kit from walmart, no matter how well intentioned.
Frankly, looking over their shoulders on this video, this group of effing and blinding diggers were not doing a very good job at recovering the information that their hole clearly destroyed. The Code of Practice says they should leave it and call in the archaeologists (read it please http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/publications/3684.aspx/) in order that we get for our (public) money more than just a heap of decontextualised artefacts. If that's what we wanted, we could wait until they come on eBay and perhaps get them cheaper. The point of the Treasure Act is to prevent that happening, and to get the archaeological context examined properly. But the way it is working now it is not doing that.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
I'm training to be an elitist bastard, sorry archaeologist.
I'm not 'elitist' becuase I assume that having undergone training (including a good deal about the ethics of archaeology) may place me in a more suitable position to excavate than someone with a passing interest no matter how passionate. Hell I wouldn't trust myself to excavate any of the finds detectorists dig up; I know I need more training first, I know I don't have the expertise.
If anything the MDs who assume they are entitled and able to undertake such important work with no training are displaying far more 'elitism'.
It's not 'elitist' to suggest that a highly skilled job should be done by skilled professionals.
Unless you'd be happy having dental work done by a keen amateur dentist.
Welcome to the blog. Excellent point and well put. Just a few weeks ago in Egypt I had an isolated block of stratigraphy about 1.5 x 1m to take down. I was looking at it and drawing, cleaning and generally contempllating it and the price of error if I got the sequence of layers in it wrong for three stomach-churning days before I plucked up the courage to take a trowel to it. These guys would just take a shovel to it.
Be it noted, the poster of the "anti-archie" hate story is lying low. Keen to throw out accusations, less keen to back them up when challenged. Typical metal detectorist behaviour.
I am not lying low. I am trying to find the newspaper from about 1980 which ran the story where the detectorists had to fight to detect on the soil which had been dumped on the town rubbish dump.
UK detectorists search almost exclusively on plowed fields. The plows used today go a lot deeper than in the past. They often destroy artifacts. Case in point was the Saxon hoard from Shropshire which was damaged by plowing. Modern day fertilizers are finishing off the job as is acid rain. These people are actually rescuing your history and you either cannot or will not admit it.
The working class men in the video handed in their find. Sure they were a rough lot but so what?
Your museums are loaded down with finds from detectorists. they are an asset and they certainly do not deserve your scorn. Dave. North Carolina USA.
We do not need a "newspaper", you said you witnessed it, name of site, name of director please. Cannot see that they'd be fighting the archaeologist to get access to landfill under UK law.
The rest of what you say is nonsense, the hoard we see being hoiked out of the ground so roughly (yes, good description) was in danger of neither ploughing nor acid rain (and I show in my book that the "fertilisers" is a tekkie feel-good myth). The hoard was in danger of being dug up roughly by metal detectorsists, which is what happened. Yes, they deserve more than scorn for this, in some countries they'd be locked up for destruction of a bit of the archaeological record. Actually in North Carolina too if they dug up a two-thousand year old hoard of artefacts on public land.
These people are not "rescuing" they are appropriating. They are collectors. Just like the Four Corners 26 in your country. Go picket outside their courtrooms and tell the judge that Earl Shumway was "rescuing the past". Is that what you think? So go and preach it in your own country too.
The excavation in question was about thirty years ago. I was touring around England and found a notice on the wall in a pub that the metal detecting club meeting was being held there that night. I went to the meeting where I was invited to detect on the town rubbish dump. Before I even got to the site the following morning the police had arrived to stop the detecting. the police informed the detectorists that the director of the archeological dig was filing a complaint even though the soil was on a rubbish dump. I got a letter after getting back to the USA from one of the club members. He included several newspaper cuttings relating to the incident. The bottom line was that the local judge ruled in favour of the detectorists. One cutting showed the director holding a bust of Mars which the detectorists had found. There was of course no mention that they had found it. I am still looking for the letter. I will let you know when I find it.
I admit that there are plenty of people who use a metal detector as a tool to commit crimes. Detectorists as a majority are good honest types. Remember that few metal detectors will detect a coin sized object deeper than about 35cms which is not as deep as a plough cuts into the ground.
As to the Four Corners incident, the artifacts were all stone, leather and wood. No metal detectors were used by the criminals involved.
OK, we will obviously never agree on this subject. I do however think that you might consider reading this book:
Metal Detecting and Archaeology
Edited by Suzie Thomas
Edited by Peter Stone
http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=10305
Dave. * * *
>The excavation in question <
So you did not actually SEE the excavation itself? You said quite clearly that you “witnessed” it. You also said it was “state funded” – how do you know that if you were not there?
"touring around England and found a notice on the wall in a pub that the metal detecting club meeting was being held there that night. and you just "happened" to be there with your metal detector in c. 1980. Now tell me how common do you think it wouldave been in 1980 for a metal detecting club in teh North of England to invite a total stranger along to a "honeypot" site like that? You were pretty lucky.
Anyhow this is still notably short of details, town, name of club?
police informed the detectorists that the director of the archeological dig was filing
a complaint On what grounds? Archaeologist or owner of the landfill site? Why did it get to court? You see if the landowner had not agreed to let them on his land, a court could not overturn that (private property rights you know). Likewise if the landowner agreed, then there is no way a third person (the archaeologist) would have any legal basis from interfering. I really do not nderstand ow you think this operated.
there are plenty of people who use a metal detector as a tool to commit crimes" But that is not at all the point I was making. It is not just the criminal element that erodes the archaeological record through their collecting activities.
"As to the Four Corners incident, the artifacts were all stone, leather and wood. No metal detectors were used by the criminals involved" (ooops, innocent until proven guilty and all that...) Ah, I see, so something makes artefact collectors who use metal detectors and spades superior to and “less damaging” than those who just use spades? And why, pray would that be? So if instead of Native American sites and graves, they had been removing objects from Civil War battlefields and cemeteries? Would you as a fellow detectorist advocate their
"collectors' rights"?
This is rich:
"I do however think that you might consider reading this book: Metal Detecting and Archaeology Edited by Suzie Thomas Edited by Peter Stone" Have you? I was asked to contribute a capter but declined. Instead with Nigel Swift I wrote a whole book which is being produced by the same publisher which is a sort of "answer" to that. All the arguments, the fertiliser, plough damage, "only scratching the surface", "we are not nighthawks so you must love us" and all the other 47 nonsense arguments are dissected, discussed and a wholly logical case put forward for the need to reassess current attitudes and policies.
The metal detecting club offered to share their site with me for a reason. After I tell you why, you can and likely will really hate me even more than you do now!!!
I am an electronics engineer with a specialty in military secure spread spectrum radio transmission systems. I am also a well known inventor and designer of electronic metal detectors.
I have many patents in my name. My latest metal detector patent is due to issue this month. email me if you would like the details to: devilbat666@gmail.com.
The club members in question were all eager to see my latest detector design which is why I got the invite.
While most of my metal detector designs are focused on the finding of unexploded ordinance, I have also designed metal detectors for gold prospecting, security and of course for use by archeologists (be they upper class English twits) or a bunch of Geordies from Newcastle).
I myself was born in England to working class parents. My father was a butcher and my mother worked for the GPO delivering the Royal Mail.
Maybe this is why I find you and your upper class elitists so utterly alien and unacceptable.
The history below our feet belongs to me just as much as it does to you.
I more than agree that certain sites need to be protected from criminals. However, ploughed fields of no known historic importance need no such protection.
You could of course ban all farming as it is pretty obvious that the deleterious effects of ploughing and the growing of food for the masses cannot ever be justified.
To me, you and your type are made up of a mixture of some kind of perverted elitism along with an equal measure of Marxism. You feel that you know better than the rest of us so you demand control.
Let me say that unlike in the UK, archeologists outside of England actually encourage and utilize their detectorists as a powerful tool.
My metal detecting friends in Denmark are routinely invited to work with archeologists on Viking sites. Again, I can provide info about this if you email me.
Why not befriend, educate and use your detectorists in the same way? You may well be pleasantly surprised at how well you can both work together.
Dave. * * *
No, I was actually referring to the anecdote about the excavation in c. 1980 which you seem conveniently to have forgotten to provide a better account of....
Well, why does it not surprise me that a guy (we now find out it is Dave Emery from North Carolina) who invents equipment allowing people to cash in on digging up the archaeological heritage is not only a gun owner [http://www.auctionarms.com/help/forum/DisplayForum.cfm?SubjectID=25243] but to top it all works for the US military working out ways to help them kill people? He also seems to have a fascination for Satanic symbols and names (“Pulse Devil” “Devilbat” “666”).
This patent presumably would be for the “Pulse Devil Nemesis”, a particularly nasty looking box-with-twiddly-dials-on-a-stick which was due out months ago. http://www.findmall.com/read.php?34,1049922
http://www.arizonagoldprospectors.com/invision/index.php?/topic/109007-pulse-devil-nemesis-pics/
“The Nemesis ignores iron without any loss of depth to good targets” so basically if this is the new trend, we are going to be seeing even less archaeological finds of iron recorded on the PAS, because they are “not good targets” – they are nevertheless archaeological objects.
Mr Emery wrote a cliché-loaded post which I really cannot be bothered with answering, but lamely ends with “Why not befriend, educate and use your detectorists in the same way? You may well be pleasantly surprised at how well you can both work together”. He seems not to have noticed that it was precisely about this group of detectorists’ ability and willingness to work together with the archaeologists (not just the coroner) that is in question. They blithely dug up the lot with never a thought for whether the archaeologists should be involved. I guess that’s probably because they too think they are “upper class twits” who’d only get in the way of getting the glittery stuff out of the ground as quickly as possible.
Oonbelievable.
Dave replied, says that in his opinion working for the US military is OK, says "Jesus Christ is my personal savior" and then goes on about "the overwhelming influence in the UK by Muslims" and then some rampant anti-Muslim stuff better placed on some other website, not mine.
This exchange has gone on far too long and Mr Emery has pushed it well away from the original topic of the post. The next comment from "Dave" accepted here will contain the name of the site his anti-archaeological anecdote concerns or not at all.
A comment was sent today to this old post purporting to be from two people who run a respectable personal coaching company but I think the literary style of this text differs so sharply from the website and blog of this couple that I am pretty sure the post to my blog was not actually sent by them. I have therefore deleted the comment and discuss it in my metal detectorists' nonsense blog-ghetto.
http://detectoristcopywrite.blogspot.com/2010/08/bitta-persnl-divelopment.html
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