A blog commenting on various aspects of the private collecting and trade in archaeological artefacts today and their effect on the archaeological record.
Friday, 10 June 2011
Collecting Away a Non-Renewable Resource
. You Tube video about the non-sustainability of collecting away a finite resource: "this site has been done".
PeaceHavens (Gedd Dodd) assures his fellow artefact hunters: "If you want to find anything you've got to find a new site that's not been detected before" because as he shows, once somebody's taken the surface evidence of human activity in the past from a place, its gone. There is no way of getting that evidence back once it has been discarded, scattered in ephemeral personal collections or flogged off on eBay. Now what he's enthusing about is mostly modern 'byegones', but the same principle applies to a Roman settlement, Early Medieval cemetery or whatever.
What happens when 10 000 + artefact hunters run out of "new sites"?
British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.
"coiney" - a term I use for private collector of dug up ancient coins, particularly a member of the Moneta-L forum or the ACCG
"heap-of-artefacts-on-a-table-collecting" the term rather speaks for itself, an accumulation of loose artefacts with no attempt to link each item with documented origins. Most often used to refer to metal detectorists (ice-cream tubs-full) and ancient coin collectors (Roman coins sold in aggregated bulk lots)
"tekkie" - metal detectorist/metal detecting (a form of artefact hunting)
CDE - Collection-Driven Exploitation of archaeological sites
CPAC - Cultural Property Advisory Committee [US]
FLO - Finds Liaison Officer (post in the PAS)
HER - Historic Environment Record [UK]
IAPN - International Association of Professional Numismatists
MENA - Middle East and North Africa
PAS - Portable Antiquities Scheme
PNG - Professional Numismatists' Guild
UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNESCO 1970 Convention - Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property
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