Heritage Action Asks: Who Misleads the BBC?

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Heritage Action has an article about something I mentioned here earlier. It's called: BBC misleads viewers – but who misled the BBC? Just what message are the British public getting about archaeology these days due to the kind of "outreach" being done by the discipline? There is more and more evidence that archaeology is becoming seen by the main stakeholder in the archaeological heritage only as the hunt for glittery geegaws which "tell a story" which can be done by an ordinary bloke with a metal detector and a spade and a good place to look. I am sure this will have unfortunate long term consequences for the discipline. The author of the HA piece quite rightly points out the vast differences there are between archaeology and collecting artefacts, a distinction that seems no longer one archaeologists themselves feel free to talk about over there (or maybe for British archaeologists these days there really is NO difference?).

We’ll send [the BBC] this article and explain to them that the documenting and collecting of things from the past for their own sake is not archaeology, amateur or otherwise, but antiquitism. Let’s see if they desist from tarnishing the good name of tens of thousands of genuine, selfless amateur archaeologists – or if someone has a quiet word asking them to carry on.