Daily Mail Archaeology: "How the West was Won"

.
The Daily Mail's Archaeology Correspondent working incognito has written an enthusiastic article about a hoard found by PAS "partners" with their metal detectors. "The discovery of a hoard of 100 ancient coins could prove the Romans conquered more of the South West than thought, it has been claimed. It had been believed that Exeter, in Devon, was the last major outpost of the ancient empire. But the chance find of the treasure and evidence of a huge settlement further west may force historians into a rethink. As one of the 'most significant Roman discoveries for many decades', it has challenged the theory that fierce resistance from local tribes to the invaders stopped them from moving any further.
This text has got coineys over the sea ever so excited. Californian dugup artefact dealer Dave Welsh would apparently like to sell his clients "ancient coins like this one" (just look more closely at the picture) found by site-plundering artefact hunters under Britain's ever-so-liberal laws and thinks:

"This discovery and the responsible manner in which it was reported to authorities is only the latest of many examples of how effectively the UK's Treasure Act/PAS scheme has brought all classes and interest groups in that nation together in their determination to responsibly explore and protect their ancient heritage".

Washington lawyer Peter Tompa claims:

Here is yet another example of how a hoard reported by amateurs has given a lead to archaeologists that has resulted in a reassessment of local history. [...] what are the odds archaeologists would have ever found the remains of Roman settlement had they not been alerted by metal detectorists?

Now it is true that archaeological expeditions rarely get out into the wilds of Devon. My colleague, archaeo-explorer John Forbes-Fortescue at Exeter University tells me that every time they send one out in the badlands west of Exeter, their car is followed down the moorland track by crowds of wide-eyed native children running barefoot shouting after it, while the adults start furtively gathering the kindling under the village wicker man. A large part of this year's university fieldwork budget went on buying coloured glass beads to be used in an effort to determine from the natives what happened to the ten-man expedition that was sent out to Okehampton last March and disappeared. Such a region was obviously entirely outside the area of interest of early antiquaries, and in contrast to other areas of Britain, the illiterates in country churches and local notables were not a bit interested in antiquarian studies. To even think of the existence here of a learned society of any kind amongst such savages is obviously a total misapprehension. It is therefore understandable that the archaeological record of the whole of this region is an almost total blank. It obviously therefore is absolutely no exaggeration for Bloomsbury Sam of the British Museum to admit in the Daily Mail article being used as the sole source of information by Tompa and Welsh that finding Roman coins in Devon is: "the beginning of a process that promises to transform our understanding of the Roman invasion and occupation of Devon". We are just at the beginning of understanding how the Romans invaded the island as a whole of course, scholars have only been examining the question for a few years, the subject was not at all popular in Britain for so many decades. Our understanding of the Roman occupation, which left so few traces in either the historical or archaeological record is scant. I am sure Bloomsbury Sam and his legions of artefact hunters can set the record straight after centuries of scholarly neglect. (Just in case somebody reading this has not caught on, all of the above is sarcasm written in 'ironic script').

Let us have a look at this exciting, allegedly paradigm-smashing hoard. In the "crime" section of the local newspaper, the finders are named as "six members from the East Devon Metal Detecting Society – Colin Hancock, Anthony Osbourne, John Evans, John Hill, George Stevens and Stephen Bassett" and the date is given as February 24 and March 1, 2008, and the findspot is not a secret at all, its "on farmland in Whiddon Down, near Okehampton". The hoard consisted of 136 coins, three denarii and 133 copper alloy ones. The earliest coin was of the emperor Vespasian (AD 69-79) and the latest one was of Septimius Severus (193-211), but most of them were of second century date. Excavations indicated that the hoard was deposited in a settlement on the road to Exeter at a crossroads (yet another Roman coin hoard found in a settlement).

As a result of the finding of this hoard, it appears Danielle Wootton of the Portable Antiquities Scheme carried out a geophysical survey at the findspot last summer:

she said she was astonished to find evidence of a huge settlement on the site which, for security reasons, has only been located as 'several miles west of Exeter'. [...] She carried out a trial excavation on the site, and has already uncovered evidence of extensive trade with Europe, a road possibly linking to the major settlement at Exeter, and some intriguing structures, as well as many more coins.

"Trade with Europe" eh? Who would've thought of it? All those years ago (sorry, more sarcasm).

In reality over three hundred years of fieldwork and reported chance finds (made with the eyes before people started buying metal detectors), have given us a fairly clear view of the archaeology of the southwestern tip of the British Isles in the period between the beginning of the first century AD right through into the fifth and sixth centuries (and beyond of course). While we can always add detail, the broad picture is clear, and that is that the area was neither empty of archaeologically detectable settlements of the Roman period, nor devoid of contact with the rest of the province (or Empire). The area is outside the 'villa zone' (as are other parts of the province in the west particularly) but was fully coin using, as is evidenced by many previously known coin finds from the region to the end of the use of coinage. After that, however the whole region was quite well supplied by North African Red Slip Ware and Mediterranean amphorae, showing that the region was well-and-truly part of the Roman world. Far from "the theory" (whose? Cornish separatists'?) "that fierce resistance from local tribes to the invaders stopped [the Romans] from moving any further west", my understanding is the more usual interpretation is of the Dumnonians existing as a client kingdom beyond the Fosse Way, but certainly in no way rejecting Roman culture. The region has produced many coin finds (Map produced from PAS data alone to 1997), had a road system, was recipient of imports such as terra sigillata and metalwork. The Ravenna Cosmology lists a Statio Deventiasteno between the unidentified entries Devionisso and Duriarno, probably somewhere on the Dumnonian peninsula. There is a well-known Roman village at Chysauster in Cornwall, and a Flavian fort at Nunstallon, inscribed milestones, tin mines and iron producing area on the north coast of Devon. While the settlement pattern and density differed from that to the east and (particularly) northeast, this was hardly an area beyond the fringes of the Empire. We do not need metal detectorists hoiking loose finds out of context to tell us that. An additional point, there are amateur archaeological societies in both Cornwall and Devon which do excellent work, it is somewhat insulting to them to suggest that all that is needed to"make a beginning" studying the past in the area is to buy a metal detector.

Roman coin finds and Roman roads in Devon and Cornwall.

It is somewhat annoying that archaeologists like Ms Wootton and BM coiney Sam Moorhead, when called to say something to the newspapers, cannot take a deep breath and say something archaeologically sensible. They apparently feel that every find made and reported by a metal detectorist in Britain has to be made to sound somehow Indiana-Jones-"exciting" and paradigm-shattering significant. It has to be "narrativised" with reference to some stereotypical arguments such as those about "wild tribes versus invaders" (the coin hoard is a century and a half AFTER the invasions had finished in the lowland region of Britain) and telling people that it somehow "challenges" some "theory" or other. A "theory" which in reality is thrown into question by evidence produced by research going back several centuries, to which the Daily Mail account ("archaeological outreach") of Wootton and Moorhead makes absolutely no reference. The British public is systematically being given a totally false picture of current thought on the history of the region virtually every time the PAS start their glib dumbed-down narrativisation of the bric-a-brac metal detectorists show them, and a totally false picture of archaeological research. The PAS is supposed to be conducting archaeological "outreach" but fails to do so almost every time they open their mouths. Still the coineys over the sea think the PAS are doing a good job.

Vignette (top): Conditions for archaeological fieldwork in Devon are notoriously rough.

UPDATE: I am grateful to David Gill for showing that it's not just Bloomsbury Sam the Coiney that has ideas that this hoard is "peeple's revisionist history in da making" . Richard Birch "Exploring what the Romans did for us", Express & Echo (Exeter UK), January 20, 2011.

Also he points out another find is announced as "earth shattering" in the same way, this time from the BBC: Roman fort found in Cornwall 'rewrites history'

A Roman fort which has been discovered in Cornwall is challenging previous historical views about the South West. Pottery and pieces of slag have been found at the undisclosed location near St Austell, suggesting an ironworks. Experts said the discovery challenges previous thinking about the region's history as it had been thought Romans did not settle much beyond Exeter. John Smith, from Cornwall Historic Environment Service, said: "This is a major discovery, no question about it".

Sort of like a record stuck in a groove isn't it? How many times can their "picture" be challenged in the same way before British archaeologists stop expressing feigned delighted surprise to the press?