"Let the Treasure Hunters Rampage on, Ripping Out the Evidence"

.

On the basis of the latest piece of 'propaganda of Success' from England's Portable Antiquities Scheme, ACCG's Peter Tompa admonishes the Italians ("PAS Reaches Milestone") that:

PAS is a system better able to weather lean budgets because it relies on finders to help record objects and the State only retains for its own purposes those objects it deems significant. There are no curatorial expenses associated with most objects as these are returned to the finder and/or landowner after recordation.

Well, the PAS did not well weather its own financial cuts a few years back (in which the ACCG lent its support to its Friends) it lost its education officer for example, cutting right at the roots of its primary mission of "outreach" (recording finds is just one of its aims).

Tompa claims that "the idea that restrictions on collectors will further archaeological research was always a fantasy". That is an odd thing to say, that is like saying "the idea that restrictions on big game hunting will further ecological research was always a fantasy", isn't it? (you can put whale hunting, illegal export of threatened species and a few other environmental protection measures in that and it would make about the same sense). The idea of placing restrictions on the exploitation of the fragile and finite resource that is the archaeological record (what is left of it) as a mere source of collectables which are then illegally exported and sold on foreign markets is there to protect the resource.

From that point of view, is the PAS actually achieving much? Well, if we look at the "recordation" (sic) of artefact hunters' finds, there is a counter which suggests the answer is no, and that refers only to the 'recordable' finds, it does not refer to the 'collateral' damage done to archaeological sites by the digging of metal detector signals which produce nothing collectable or saleable (except as non-ferrous scrap for melting). Is the PAS allowing the state to get all the "important" finds into publuic collections? Well, no, quite the contrary - ACCG's only employee, Canadian collector John Hooker boasted two days ago he had bought what he argues is an extremely important metal artefact from a dealer selling the products of UK metal detecting, and it had not even been seen and assessed by the PAS (which is merely voluntary).

Is protection of the archaeological resource merely a matter of "recordating" the objects taken out of the ground during its destruction? That is akin to a group of iconocalsts smashing out the Medieval stained glass in a cathedral saving all the saint's faces so that they can be photographed by art historians before they disappear too on the scrapheap. Better than nothing? Surely wouldn't it be better to stop the window-smashing so the whole decorative scheme and its message be appreciated by future generations, not just a few isolated sherds? Would it not be more sensible to stop the wanton destruction of archaeological sites and assemblages by artefact hunters (Tompa calls them "finders" ) rather than rejoice that we now have 400 k "records" of isolated sherds of information? Especially as the Heritage Action Counter sugests that some ten MILLION more have already gone to the scrap heap, like Joohn Hooker's finial, without record?

Why would Tompa praise destruction on this scale? Well of course the scattered ephemeral personal artefact accumulations of ACCG members acquired like Hooker's finial no-questions-asked from an unknown source are the 'scrap heaps' of the analogy. Tompa is no "Observer" but the guardian of the scrap heap owners.

There are indeed no curatorial expenses associated with keeping the archaeological evidence which is not only "returned to the finder and/or landowner after recordation", but often disappear as they are sold off soon afterwards. The costs however to the curation of the fragile and finite archaeological resource they come from however is uncountable.

Tompa asks:

Isn't it better to engage interested members of the public by recognizing the interests of finders and collectors?

I say the interests of the preservation of the archaeological record in Britain and elsewhere and thus the interests of the main stakeholders in it, that is the public as a whole - living, dead and yet-to-be born, is best served by an organization which engages members of the public by drawing attention to the deleterious efects of the careless and indiscriminate exercise of self-interests by irresponsible finders and collectors. THAT the PAS is signally failing to do to any significant extent, both in Britain and especially in its outreach abroad. Merely trumpeting the next "milestone" on the failing race to keep the records up to the pace of erosion is only serving to promote the image of the protection of the archaeological resource, of the aims of modern archaeology, as a race to get as many barely-contextualised "goodies" out of the ground and into private collections as possible and as cheaply as possible.

If Mr Tompa and his fellow collectors persist in their belief that archaeological context is unimportant and hoiking as much stuff out of context now for as few pounds as possible is what archaeology and conservation are about, the PAS has clearly failed in doing what it was in fact set up to do thirteen years ago. It is time to take stock of the way PAS is currently being run and what the longterm effects of that are likely to be on the archaeological record and public perceptions of the discipline of archaeology, ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Illustration: Artefact Hunters expressing their collectors' interests in the historic enviroonment in the Netherlands, but its OK, we have photos of 400 000 broken bits in a database somewhere and nobody now has to pay the costs of upkeep of this heritage.