Ethical Metal Detecting Association launched!

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Nigel Swift has written a text about the launch of a new group, dedicated to "Ethical Metal Detecting". This EMDA was launched today. The Association comprises a group of reputable metal detecting enthusiasts motivated by a love of history who believe that what is found in the fields is everyone’s history and who therefore keep to strict ethical guidelines in order that both the way they conduct themselves and every find they make benefit everyone.

There’s no definition of ethical metal detecting, anywhere. No metal detectorist, no supporter has come up with one and remarkably (considering its whole raison d’être) nor has PAS! All we have is the Code for Responsible Metal Detecting and you could hardly claim that isn’t a watered-down “best-we-can-hope-for” version of “ethical”. (Try reading it substituting “ethical” for “responsible”. It becomes gobbledygook.) If ethical is to do with maximum public benefit and minimum public damage then the Code can hardly be said to have much to do with ethicality at all. Which maybe explains exactly why PAS hasn’t defined ethical? To do so would be to emphasize how far from ethicality the Code actually is. Still, there are some detectorists striving to be more ethical and it seems to me their standards ought to be codified as well, indeed more so than the contents of the Code.

But there is more to that post... soon after its text was posted, one "Lucie P" chimed in with a comment. She says that "the public at large" is simply "not that interested in either side's arguments nor do they care about what either hobby is digging up out of the ground". That, that sounds awfully like the sort of thing that would be said by somebody else known perhaps to some readers of this blog, that the public is not concerned about the effects of artefact hunting on the archaeological heritage (and whose fault is that when we are spending millions of pounds on "outreach"?). The trouble is, "LucyP" is another one of those metal detecting Internet imposters that we seem to be seeing a lot of recently in the discussion about artefact hunting. As the moderator says:

You have illustrated graphically, at just the right moment, the fundamental problem – that a metal detectorist can so easily claim he is one thing when actually he may have a totally different agenda. This is precisely why an Ethical Metal Detecting Association is needed – so that truly ethical metal detectorists can rid themselves of other people’s reputations once and for all.