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In Heritage Journal this week, Nigel Swift looks at commercial artefact hunting rallies held ostensibly for charity (“Charity Metal Detecting Rallies”: A racket exposed' 16/08/2011). On the face of it holding a "charity metal detecting rally" might even sound vaguely noble. When you look at the issue more closely, the implications are shocking.
His text starts off with the announcement that detecting forum UKDN have posted an advert for an artefact hunting rally at Little Maplestead, Essex. That immediately made me feel ill. Felicity Winkley wants to know how "detectorists" "feel about the landscapes" where they go a-plundering. Let her get over to the rally and ask them. I'd be interested to know whether its how I feel about it. This is where I first took part in an archaeological excavation, many many years ago. I feel a very special bond myself with that landscape and its history and archaeology. The Round Church (Templar you now) the ancient hedgerows and field boundaries, the Roman urns found in the churchyard in the nineteenth century, the ancient yews, the pub where - still underage - I had my first pint, the Roman brick scatter in one of the fields. There is a lot of archaeological research that could still be done in the fields around the churches of the Maplesteads , could HAVE been done before the artefact hunters got there and started hoiking holes in the archaeological record that has lain there for centuries and millennia to take stuff away to hoard in their personal collections or push onto ebay. A pox on them all.
Nigel notes however something else equally worthy of condemnation:
an extraordinary “license agreement” that the landowners have already signed and crucially it says: “Only items subject to the Treasure Act 1996 are to be divided 50/50 with the respective landowners.” Trouble is, those items all belong to the State so can’t possibly be subject to a private agreement to share them, as detectorists all know. The sole effect is to make the landowner think the detectorists are offering him something. They aren’t!
Worse, since it specifies “only” Treasure items will be shared it means non Treasure items don’t have to be. Yet non Treasure items are often far more valuable than Treasure items and anyway comprise 99.9% of anything that’s likely to be found! Let me put it in stark terms: almost every item found, be it worth ten pounds or ten thousand, has been signed over in full to the detectorists and if another Crosby Garrett Helmet is found the landowner will get nothing and the detectorist will get £2.3 million! Did anyone explain? Would the landowners have signed if they’d understood? And there’s more. The £14 entry fees (but not the finds, nota bene) go to Maplestead Round Church restoration (as they should!) so it is presented as an entirely beneficial “charity” event – to such an extent that the Friends of the Little Maplestead Round Church are running a food and drink stall to supply those that are busy relieving the locals, the church funds and the landowner of 100% of what is found!
So there we are. Doubtless the locals have heard the universal detectorists’ mantra “we’re only interested in history” and assume the attendees are all charitably minded heritage heroes for whom the selling of finds is anathema (and visiting detecting websites like UKDN won’t have taught them otherwise!) And even if they did have fleeting doubts, PAS will be there, giving every impression the whole process is archaeologically sound, officially sanctioned and not at all an oikish, unnecessary, damaging and acquisitive racket.
PAS will be there? What good will that do? The same PAS that refused to answer my enquiry whether she'd be at another resource gobbling event on another significant part of Essex's landscape palimpsest?
Nigel makes the point through irony: if communities are dead set on allowing the digging up of their local archaeological record to raise charity money it surely should be done in a way that allows "100% of any government Treasure rewards to go to the charity, 100% of all the other finds could go to the charity" with 100% recording asking:
if avoidable archaeological damage had to take place would you rather it was on the basis that £2.3 million might go to a church restoration fund or to self-proclaimed history lovers every one of whom had signed a contract ensuring every single last penny went to themselves and not the landowner or charity?Vignette: Trashing one bit of (unknown) local history to support another (better known)
5 comments:
I dont usually comment but I thought I would just say how offensive I find it that you put all metal detectorists in the same basket! I have been detecting for about 20 years and I am also an amateur archaeologist. When you say that detectorists start 'hoiking holes in the archaeological record' you should maybe mention that 99.9% of ALL holes dug by detectorists are between 2-12 inches deep. Then perhaps you should also mention that 99.9% of ALL detectoring is done on farmland and farm fields that are ploughed to a depth of roughly 1-4 feet on average. Now please explain how a hoel of say 6 inches is invading a non-existant archaeological record due to 100's of years of ploughing that goes way beyond the depth of metal detectors?
Wait, wait. You - anonymous person - call yourself a "metal detectorist" but then castigate me for "putting all metal detectorists in one basket"? You do not want to be "put in the same basket as metal detectorists that support charity rallies"? WHY is that "offensive"? You sir or madam are simply illogical.
If you are one of the white sheep "responsible metal detectorists" about which we hear so much (so, they'd be the ones that according to you don't go to charity rallies?) and a fellow archaeologist, then why in blazes do you come here hiding your name? My name is Paul Barford, I put my name under what I write. What are you hiding?
In any case what I wrote is I find artefact hunting offensive. I do. It is a form of rape, plunder, violation of the historical record which is a finite and fragile resource which needs to be protected not exploited.
So how would you describe what you do with your metal detector? In what way are you an "amateur archaeologist"? What do you consider - since you do not use the terms as synonyms - to be the difference between artefact hunting and archaeology (and I do not care if the PAS says you all are, it can be easily argued that the PAS is wrong, not that the PAS will ever stand up and take part in any such discussion).
In rape, the depth of penetration and where it happens is immaterial, the violation is the important factor. If you were an amateur archaeologist, you would appreciate the random but selective removal of elements of the archaeological record distorts it, even (especially) if its a surface site, making its interpretation impossible. Like if somebody goes to a murder scene before the police get there and take away some of the items (could be "on the surface", "in a field") as a souvenir and touch and move the other things.
Geez "Edem" (not real name) where on earth do you live that the farmers "plough four feet deep"? Their fields must look like the Somme.
Thanks for the heads-up Paul.
I empathise with your feeling of a special bond with that landscape, I have the same myself with the Avebury landscape along with thousands of other amateurs. People coming in and helping themselves to parts of it, as metal detectorists do, invariably offends very deeply on both an emotional and logical level. You simply CANNOT do that and yet feel protective of a landscape which is why the questionnaire is so inappropriate and pointless. And potentially very damaging. No doubt virtually 100% of detectorists will profess feelings for the places they detect in, whereas a quick look over a hedge to a rally will reveal something very different going on – personal acquisition, the more the better.
Concern for the landscape my eye. It’s a hobby and it involves collecting stuff and taking it home. No amount of propaganda will mean that there are other than ignoble things going on over that hedge. And that includes endless press releases by PAS and golden PR opportunities offered for free to detectorists by Ms Winkley.
Here’s a book about Landscape. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Pwuc6n66U9IC&lpg=PP1&dq=walsham%20The%20Reformation%20of%20the%20Landscape%3A%20Religion%2C%20Identity%2C%20and%20Memory%20in%20Early%20Modern%20Britain%20and%20Ireland&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false
She should ask detectorists if they've read it. Most would say yes no doubt. Then she should look over the hedge at any grabfest and consider what is REALLY going on. I thought academic research was about seeking the truth not letting people build a false picture.
:..."and taking it home..." well quite. For most of these people it's clearly nothing to do with landscape. Have a look at old Edem's (or whatever he claims his name is) post above this, any signs of "connections with the landscape" there? Absolutely none I can see.
the same goes for what passes for "discussion" on their forums, in the trade magazines (Searcher, treasure hunting) or whatever.
Edem here talks matter of factly about destroyed sites and ploughing to a depth of FOUR FEET, but all he writes here about is "being lumped in the same basket as other metal detectorists"...
Discussing the truth with detectorists is invariably tiresome, like discussing vegetarianism with cannibals. They offer no logic only false and platitudinous justifications. And always, always, a tone of injured innocence. But I really can't resist pointing out the following to "Edem"....
1. You can’t possibly be an amateur archaeologist AND a metal detectorist – either you think pocketing stuff for yourself is OK in which case you're a detectorist or you disapprove,in which case you're an amateur archaeologist, you can’t do both. As Paul says, you’re illogical.
2. Once and for all: disturbed plough soil is rarely devoid of spatial and other information so detecting in it is certainly often damaging. That’s not a debating point it’s a fact. As is the fact a lot of detecting is on undisturbed pasture - try Central Searchers for one, they don't give a damn.
3. Your claim that 99.9% of holes dug by detectorists are 2-12 inches deep isn’t a defence it’s a confession. See this survey of farmers http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6860 (that’s a proper survey, Ms Winkley, as the respondents don’t have a vested interest in lying!) – three quarters of them say they plough in the 4 to 9 inch range and 94% plough shallower than 12 inches.
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