Focus on UK Artefact Hunting: More on Detecting Pasture

There is more on the thread "Advice on Pasture Land": Alun (Reply #20 on: February 08, 2013, 09:31:14 PM ). Thanks to PAS "outreach", artefact hunters now consider selective hoiking can be done in a "professional" manner. The post's author addresses his comments directly to this blogger:

This weekend will see our first full search of the area [...] Rest assured Mr Barford the search will go on, in a professional manner and if i am fortunate enough to unearth anything of interest then our friends in PAS will have the benefit of yet again valuable artefacts found by metal detectors. I did read your comment through your blog, of which brought the scenario of Ostrich and sand sprang (sic) to mind [...for those anxious to read the provincial small town oik filth with which the bloke ended his comment, I refer readers to the original detecting forum post] 

It is not exactly hiding one's head in the sand to raise the alarm that there is a whole misconception being propagated here throughout society as the result of highly expensive but ideologically dubious PAS "outreach" that an adequate archaeological response to a threat to a site is a quick twice-over of a given site of interest with a metal detector to find a few selected items "of interest" and "valuable artefacts". I would say it is those in the archaeological establishment who continue to ignore this and the effects it is having and is likely to have in both the short and long-term futures for the discipline as a whole are the ones refusing to look and see. Is this PAS's most shameful legacy of all?