A UK Artefact Hunter's Collection: "Stubble Hunter" comes clean

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I came across the website of one "Stubble hunter" (John Feenan) while looking for something else. He has been artefact hunting with a metal detector for two years, after a break of 20. What is interesting is he admits the equipment he is using is not top-of-the -market, so may be considered as typical of many UK detectorists. This seems an interesting source of information about finds rates, with regard to the ongoing discussion about how many reportable finds are disappearing without record as a result of artefact hunting. The website owner clearly has an interest in finding "hammies", medieval hammered silver coins. He writes:

My finds rate has really upped in the last 6 months too but perhaps that is because I am 'sneaking out' to the fields more often that I should ! Also I know my machine much better now so I know what to 'listen for'/'when to dig' - more crucially I sweep much slower with the head brushing the ground. Looking back before I found my first hammered coin I would not have dreamed that I would have found 30 odd in such a short space of time.

With regard the finds rate question:

To those just starting out... I should advise that for every day I may have success on (such as a hammered) there are 20 corresponding days when I will come home empty handed. Patience IS a virtue.

Well, let's have a look at some of what he is showing, there is a lot more "Old Timey" stuff shown on the website, interesting in its own right (both archaeologically and as social history collectables), but I am more interested in the PAS-recordable material. See the home page for notes on what detecting partners are finding alongside him.

Have a look through the following categories: Celtic/Iron Age coins, Iron Age artefacts, Roman coins, Roman artefacts (excepting coins), Fasteners, Viking and Saxon artefacts, Medieval 'hammered' silver coins, Rings/Jewellery, Tudor, Buckles


I make that 76+ items that are PAS-recordable. So that is more than the Heritage Action Erosion Counter predicts for an individual "average" detectorist over a two year period. Examination of this modest collection however also reveals information of another type. What is notable is that this individual has spent two years walking over sites where these artefacts are found and it is clear that his choice of items brought home has been very selective. Almost all the finds presented are of metal, many of them are coins. There is no trace here of any of the sites he explored (exploited) containing pottery, building material (brick, tile), slag, lithic material, animal remains (one token oystershell depicted). The collector found no pin shanks and bracelet fragments to accompany the Roman fibulae, which is an odd skewing of the typical site assemblage. More to the point the past cultures examined by this collection activity seem only to have known four metals, gold, silver copper and lead alloys. They seem never to have discovered iron and the vast number of useful tool and equipment types that can be made of it. It is these that tell us so much about the economic activities taking place on the sites explored, but UK artefact hunters really do not want to collect ancient ironwork, they want the nice patinated non-ferrous "partifacts". The collector is not collecting to investigate or even illustrate a whole range of ancient lifeways, or even produce a sample of the assemblages of the sites from which these items come, these are wholly subjectively selected items, chosen as collectables. This means (a) these people are not "doing archaeology" and the results of their searches and selective carrying away and selective reporting cannot be used as such, (b) they are digging up and then discarding very large quantities of archaeological evidence in the search for pretty geegaw collectables.

How many finds has "Stubble Hunter" reported to the PAS? We don't know because the PAS keeps such data a secret (we can't have the hoi polloi whose cultural heritage is being eroded away to fill these people's collections seeing how responsible individual detectorists are, can we?). He does however "record" his finds with the private pirate recording site UKDFD. Here there are 21 "look what I have found!" items showcased, most of them coins. According to the relevant field of the UKDDatabase, just three of these items have been "reported elsewhere" (15%, the three that have are two unusual coins and a gold mourning ring). Two of these items are not PAS-reportable, but many of the objects he shows on his website are not "recorded" on UKDFD and most probably this means that the majority are not recorded by the PAS either. In other words, the activities of this collector correspond to the picture presented by the Heritage Action model in full.

It seems there will be other cases of UK metal detectorists presenting their collecting "achievements" on the Internet against which we may test the HA model and form an opinion of how many reportable artefacts are being removed from the British archaeological record without any corresponding information being made available to the public in mitigation.

UPDATE:
In another context I heard "offline" from a metal detector using collector who proudly told me that recently he had visited his FLO with a box of "1000 coins and 500 artefacts" (interesting ratio) and dumped them on her desk. This was the result of "25 years" of previous metal detecting. Even if we assume that many of the coins would have been Georgian and other non-PAS-recordable ones, this is another case (60 artefacts a year) which shows that the Heritage Action figures are not only plausible, but a little on the low side. How many detectorists with boxloads of thousands of artefacts kept have not yet visited the FLO? What happened to the artefacts they did not keep?