Detecting Under the Microscope 6: "Not the same thing at all"

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Over on the "Detectorist.co" forum is another thread that most likely will be hidden by the "detectorists" the moment people start paying attention to what it's saying. It is a protracted discussion in response to a recent news item of what "bona fide detectorists" would like to see happening to the "nighthawks" who "get the hobby a bad name". There seems to be the typical problem of finding agreement just what kind of behaviour is covered under that label. One member (pseudonym "Belzoni") for example mocks the whole concept of reacting to detectorists who hunt for artefacts on somebody else's land without getting permission, who detect on ploughed up sites protected by law or those artefact hunters who do not keep the landowners informed of what they find.

This latter point of course refers to some comments made by conservation group Heritage Action and there is an interesting comment from a detectorist (pseudonym "Soapy Joe") with a bit of a conscience about this here. He asks - somewhat illiterately so I'll paraphrase - whether all members of the list are not guilty of double standards, how many, he enquires would hold up their hands and claim that they inform the landowner of every find they ave obtained from their land? He suggests that all detectorists say that they show the landowners all their finds but he would wager that a large percentage of metal detectorists [coming off the land] if asked if they'd found anything much will say that they'd not found anything much, but hiding the fact that they've got a hammered coin, or "in some cases som[e]thing far more valuable, And yes me lord i pleed guilty". It is interesting to note the "not the same thing joe" reaction of some forum members to this comment. But of course it is isn't it? Whatever the nature of any "agreement", it is still stealing to remove items of potential value without telling the landowner whose property it is.

One also wonders that if and when an object found is concealed from the landowner in the manner described, if and when it is reported, whether the finder gives the actual findspot or gives another one where he has a more favourable "arrangement" with the landowner. Or are such concealed objects simply the ones that never get reported to the PAS?

There are a whole lot of questions which really need close examination about the patterns of activity across the whole range of what we lump together as "metal detectorists" which are barely touched in the glib pro-artefact hunting material produced in support of the current status quo. Why is this not going on?