Friday 12 October 2012

Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Don't Blame Metal Detectorists, it's the Arkies Wot Dunnit , Innit?

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Over on a metal detecting forum near you they were discussing an archaeological site which was damaged by metal detector using artefact hunters. One of them Advent frets about the information getting out:
Anything on his whos name we shall not mention, he who gloats abroad...?
[translation: "is there anything on the blog of he whose name..."] 
duh. These people are not very quick on the uptake (or at finding answers for themselves), it was mentioned here several weeks ago. Detectorist J. C. Baloney (NCMD Central Register Rep.) has his own ideas who was behind the event:
archy with a grudge digs a few holes..... thieves and legitimate detectorists tarred with one broad brush.
Forum member "mooseas" reckons: 
Personally I think this is more often the case. Seems we're generally too meek to point the finger back in the other direction. There are activists out there with a vendetta who would gladly stoop so low, just to get another twist of the knife in.
Member Magicman agrees that it is "certainly a possibility [ that it is archaeologists with a grudge]". It is also a possibility that it is Gays Against Genetically Modified Potatoes, or the People's Front Against Fracking in South Carolina trying to get attention for their respective causes, but the degree of likelihood of it being anything other than what it looks like is something that is obviously beyond these artefact hunters to fathom out. Logic is not the strong point of most who collect antiquities.

I leave it up to readers to decide whether they believe UK archaeologists are destroying sites in the name of getting those who destroy sites a bad name, or whether that is easier to understand than them calling artefact hunters "partners". I personally find the latter pretty difficult to get my head round. so perhaps they are out there with spades at night trying to get nighthawks a bad name, in the light of which their partners can claim to be as "good as gold". Or perhaps it is just people illegally searching another archaeological site for collectable artefacts for entertainment and profit. Who knows?

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