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There have been several informative videos posted up on You Tube over the past few days by survivors of the September 22/23 2012 archaeological massacre at the Weekend Wanderers commercial artefact hunting rally in Letcombe Bassett in Oxfordshire on "Sheepdrove Organic Farm" (is that subsidised under the Countryside Stewardship schemes?). Fifty pounds a weekend ticket, 20 pounds a one-day ticket (58 and 20 quid pay on the day). What is arresting about the first video by Steve Taylor is the sheer scale of the event, cars struggling to get onto the site the campsite filled up with enormous numbers of tents and campers, huge numbers of people wandering in an unregulated fashion all over the archaeological record hoiking stuff out willy nilly. How anyone can imagine that this is in any way beneficial to the heritage and our knowledge of the past beats me. In the comments however, we find somebody who is of the opposite opinion "" sez, innit?:
Have a look at the sequence starting just before the five-minute mark. Count them (remember how much they paid, somebody's making a packet). Note how they are spread out, where are the archaeologists going between them? Then work out what the odds are when they get to the PAS tent of getting a decent plot of the interrelationships of the finds they bring in individually and at different times and rates. With what degree of accuracy is the findspot of every recorded item from that rally noted? How will the FLOs keep up with recording them, unless they do it either very superficially, or on an industrial scale? So how many FLOs were present, and what sort of record was generated by this event?
At 5:54 we saw a dealer's (Roman Remains) table just off shot, someone with a dog looking like a pet pig on a leash, and another dealer's table (Dei Gratia coins and antiquities) and right next to that and facing it the Portable Antiquities Scheme table with a tasteful yellow table covering, and behind it several people shown "partnering" metal detectorists.
It seems there were Poles at this rally too and one of them ("Plgkb") has put up a two-part video showing his impressions. Weekend Wanderers Rally 2012 part 1 again stresses the size of the event and the extent of the erosion of the archaeological record. Note the extensive use of noisy heavy machinery in this exploitation of the archaeology. Once again, see here, questions may be asked about the possibility of accurately recording the distribution of finds across such a site collected in such a random manner. Towards the end of the first film, we see a bit of deep digging, most probably below plough level. Is there a FLO at the site of this excavation? Which one is the FLO? Part two starts with a scene where the mobile canteen staff are roasting "dog" meat over charcoal and serving the other sorts of things metal detectorists eat in Britain. Then some candid shots of tekkies in evening attire in a tent enjoying themselves loudly (Plgkb then went on to the 3 Counties Dig 29.09.2012).
jetskijohn2006 ("John and Jackie's metal detecting productions" sic), some finds shown at the beginning [I'd have thought any artefact collector worth his salt would not have too many doubts about that Roman coin, the reverse is a dead giveaway even without it being cleaned, didn't the PAS FLO tell him what he'd found? Very remiss of them]. Apart from that there is nothing much interesting in this "this is another one of my friends" twaddle, not much of interest in part two either. The third video from this pair is a semi-literate presentation of some finds (that's a cub scout badge I suspect) and another mention of "freinds". Here's yet another video of the same event (Paul Marland), rather short on content.
Whatever the PAS may claim about the benefits of adding "another how-many-thousand artefacts" to their wotta-lotta-stuff-we-got database, I cannot see how one can actually make a claim for this type of thing NOT being an unmitigated heritage disaster. Of course they are welcome to come here and argue the opposite case. But I bet they will not.
OR they could publish a full report of the recording project, setting out its research aims and results.
There have been several informative videos posted up on You Tube over the past few days by survivors of the September 22/23 2012 archaeological massacre at the Weekend Wanderers commercial artefact hunting rally in Letcombe Bassett in Oxfordshire on "Sheepdrove Organic Farm" (is that subsidised under the Countryside Stewardship schemes?). Fifty pounds a weekend ticket, 20 pounds a one-day ticket (58 and 20 quid pay on the day). What is arresting about the first video by Steve Taylor is the sheer scale of the event, cars struggling to get onto the site the campsite filled up with enormous numbers of tents and campers, huge numbers of people wandering in an unregulated fashion all over the archaeological record hoiking stuff out willy nilly. How anyone can imagine that this is in any way beneficial to the heritage and our knowledge of the past beats me. In the comments however, we find somebody who is of the opposite opinion "" sez, innit?:
It seems there were Poles at this rally too and one of them ("Plgkb") has put up a two-part video showing his impressions. Weekend Wanderers Rally 2012 part 1 again stresses the size of the event and the extent of the erosion of the archaeological record. Note the extensive use of noisy heavy machinery in this exploitation of the archaeology. Once again, see here, questions may be asked about the possibility of accurately recording the distribution of finds across such a site collected in such a random manner. Towards the end of the first film, we see a bit of deep digging, most probably below plough level. Is there a FLO at the site of this excavation? Which one is the FLO? Part two starts with a scene where the mobile canteen staff are roasting "dog" meat over charcoal and serving the other sorts of things metal detectorists eat in Britain. Then some candid shots of tekkies in evening attire in a tent enjoying themselves loudly (Plgkb then went on to the 3 Counties Dig 29.09.2012).
jetskijohn2006 ("John and Jackie's metal detecting productions" sic), some finds shown at the beginning [I'd have thought any artefact collector worth his salt would not have too many doubts about that Roman coin, the reverse is a dead giveaway even without it being cleaned, didn't the PAS FLO tell him what he'd found? Very remiss of them]. Apart from that there is nothing much interesting in this "this is another one of my friends" twaddle, not much of interest in part two either. The third video from this pair is a semi-literate presentation of some finds (that's a cub scout badge I suspect) and another mention of "freinds". Here's yet another video of the same event (Paul Marland), rather short on content.
Whatever the PAS may claim about the benefits of adding "another how-many-thousand artefacts" to their wotta-lotta-stuff-we-got database, I cannot see how one can actually make a claim for this type of thing NOT being an unmitigated heritage disaster. Of course they are welcome to come here and argue the opposite case. But I bet they will not.
OR they could publish a full report of the recording project, setting out its research aims and results.
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