The "British Disease" Comes to Washington

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Heritage Action discusses a video of the Staffordshire Hoard Exhibition in the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C., it is being accompanied by a story in the November issue of National Geographic magazine.

Sadly instead of emphasising only the archaeological aspects of the find, it is placed firmly in the context of artefact collecting by the Museum's decision to accompany the exhibit with a “dig pit” where the museum visitor can search for treasure with a detector themselves. It would be interesting to know if this initiative was supported by a US metal detector supplier or Ancient Coins for Education.

Heritage Action has raised the pertinent question of the degree to which Britain's largest archaeological outreach Scheme, the PAS - to whom the find was first reported - has been involved in developing the best manner in which this material is presented to the overseas audience, for whom the complex issues of the aberrant British "heritage protection" legislation and consequent pseudo-mitigation measures are as much a mystery as they are to US coineys. The opportunity could have been taken to open here (like the Smithsonian down the road say they will do with the Beilitung shipwreck exhibit) a dialogue about collecting and artefact hunting. To what degree was this seized?

Anyway, Washington lobbyist Peter Tompa can perhaps take a few hours from his campaigning for continued no-questions-asked free trade in illegally exported coins to pop along to the exhibition and at last find out how a metal detector works. We look forward to his excited report.

Vignette: Victoria Pollard, . "well, its legil innit?"