.
Note the easy assumption that speed is something that the archaeologists and museums are anxious about - when in fact the only pressure for speed comes from the artefact hunters and greedy landowners who gave them access to the sites on their land want to get their hands on the reward money as soon as possible.
Another thing, apparently, to get excited about is that the technique "avoids the risk of damage to corroding metal. As the method evolves it should be possible to fully study some objects without ever exposing them to daylight". Or indeed to spend any resources on conserving them at all. Win-win as they say. Artefact-greedy archies get the information without doing any of the footwork, tekkies get their cash. And British archaeology's backlog of unprocessed Treasure finds gets even bigger.
The PAS have come up with another way to accomodate their partners, Britain's metal detector wielding Treasure Hunters (Maev Kennedy, 'X-rays reveal secrets of Roman coins', Guardian.co.uk, Mon 9 Jul 2012).
The significance of this for artefact hunting is that "The technique could dramatically speed up assessing the significance of archaeological discoveries. With treasure finds – such as the huge Frome hoard of coins, or the dazzling Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold – under the present system finders and landowners, and museums which might want to raise funds to acquire them, all have to wait months or years."Scientists have used a new x-ray technique to produce spectacular 3D images of Roman coins that were corroded inside pots or blocks of soil. The rotating images built up from thousands of two-dimensional scans are so clear that individual coins can be identified and dated, without a single battered denarius [...] being visible to the naked eye. [...] The advantage of the new method – developed by a unique collaboration between archaeologists and scientists at the British Museum and Southampton University – is that it means coins can be identified and even dated much more quickly [...] The techniques could have profound implications for the way we assess and study finds in the future, producing results in a few hours that would take a conservator weeks or even months."
Note the easy assumption that speed is something that the archaeologists and museums are anxious about - when in fact the only pressure for speed comes from the artefact hunters and greedy landowners who gave them access to the sites on their land want to get their hands on the reward money as soon as possible.
Another thing, apparently, to get excited about is that the technique "avoids the risk of damage to corroding metal. As the method evolves it should be possible to fully study some objects without ever exposing them to daylight". Or indeed to spend any resources on conserving them at all. Win-win as they say. Artefact-greedy archies get the information without doing any of the footwork, tekkies get their cash. And British archaeology's backlog of unprocessed Treasure finds gets even bigger.
5 comments:
A small point Paul:
You're right to point out that pressure for speedy payouts doesn't come from museums but I'd also like to mention that although the odd greedy landowner may exist I can't recall any landowner moaning that the treasure process is too slow. I think they can largely be exonerated.
On the other hand, I doubt there's an artefact hunter that HASN'T complained the Treasure reward process is too slow. If anyone can name one I'd be extremely surprised!
It would indeed be very nice to think that ALL landowners are concerned about their role in the conservation of archaeological sites in Britain. If that were the case though, there would be little or NO metal detecting. As we see however an important element of the "agreements" drawn up between collector and landowner is to split any financial proceeds fifty:fifty - suggesting that the financial rewards play a part in the negotiations leading to such agreements, probably accompanied by a thick wadge of newspaper cuttings based on PAS press releases about huge rewards for treasure finds. A message soon to be reinforced by a weeklong Televised Treasure-Fest on ITV - also courtesy of the PAS. Will you be watching?
It's a funny thing, if I go to a farmer and say can I steal the rare bird's eggs or plants from your land and sell them on EBay he'd say go to hell but if I say the same about taking antiquities from an archaeological site on his land he may well say yes.
So what's the difference? Education. The government tells people the first two are wrong and the third isn't.
So yes, I'll probably watch the programme. So should everyone. (If they mentally inserted the words "rare species" each time it mentioned the word "antiquities" they'd gain the insight PAS is so keen to deprive them of!)
They are not going to call them "antiquities", but "TREZURE".
I've actually got an idea what I suggest people look out for, more of that closer to the time.
heritage action,i cant name names but in 2009 82 people waived their rights to a reward[%6 of finders/landowners]of course the other %94 took the money and run.i think the figure was slightly higher in 2010 but still a very small minority.i think these figures speak for themselves.
kyri.
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