Friday 12 October 2012

Focus on Metal Detecting: Lothians Man Finds Coins and Brooch in Poland with XP Deus

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 As announced on the metaldetectingforum.co.uk website a detectorist from "the Lothians" going under the name of "Glennfiddich" has a Polish wife (sensible man) and thus a father in law who has land down near Cracow in sunny Poland. So he decided to take his metal detector with him on the next family visit: I'm off to Poland for a week with my XP Deus wish me luck. Presumably he either thinks the laws about searching for buried archaeological material in Poland are the same as in the UK or perhaps simply does not care if they are not. He makes no mention of a permit, or what he did with the coins and "part of a brooch" he admits he found, but by Polish law (the USTAWA z dnia 23 lipca 2003 r. o ochronie zabytków i opiece nad zabytkami) they do not belong to either him, nor his father in law.

Isn't it about time that the UK's national detecting organizations revisited their earlier half-hearted attempts to inform their members of the relevant legislations and the responsibilities of finders that result from them within at least the EU (Schengen zone)?

Meanwhile in Poland, archaeologists want a change in the law concerning artefact hunting, some of them want to legalise it, there is an ongoing parliamentary debate on the topic. Here's an article about it (in Polish) and a video announcing the beginning of the debate, Mr Rudnicki )(on the left) was one of my students, and thinks metal detectorists are wonderful folk. He once did a metal detector survey on a site I was excavating - quite interesting results, but my co-director has not got around to publishing them - grrrr. Second from the right is professor Alek Bursche who writes a lot (of generally good things) about artefact hunters... thereby hangs a long tale, as they say. Sadly the video is in Polish, maybe some of the "Thesaurus" detrecting club guys might like to put subtitles on it for those of you who cannot manage it.

Vignette: The Schengen zone.

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