Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Relative "Responsibility"

Imagine you are a Finds Liaison Officer of the Portable Antiquities in one of the Home Counties. Your job is to promote best practice by finders of archaeological material. Suppose one day metal detectorist Parsival Fitchett-Smythe (son of a local High Court Judge) comes to you with some stuff that disturbs you. It might be a whole series of fibulae and ornaments coming from the graves of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, they might be finds from a previously unknown site you suspect is of high importance and would benefit from a proper surface survey (including a gridded metal detector survey) before it is plundered any more for collectables, or it might be that Fitchett-Smythe is bringing in what is obviously the remains of a WW2 aircraft crash for which he has no MoD search permit.  What is in your job description entails you explaining to Mr Fitchett-Smythe why he should avoid doing any more searching on that site ("best practice") and Fitchett-Smythe understands what you say and the reasons behind it - and being a responsible sort of chap agrees and goes elsewhere.

What happens however if the detectorist is Bazza Thugwit, who tells you to ".... orf" and asks who you think you are telling him what to do in a a free country? Shrug your shoulders and just let the matter drop? Is that how a FLO goes about getting best practice? Is that how a FLO would go about protecting a site which should not be being looted from plundering? What is a FLO to do when faced with a Thugwit-type response? 

Over on a metal detectorist forum near you this problem is being discussed, not so much from the point of the FLO's position, but the Thugwit's. Forum member "Holedigger Pete" from Sittingbourne in Kent has a story for his detecting mates (Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:29 pm ). It's not (he says) his own experience, but an anonymous someone he claims to know:

A friend of mine who has been detecting a farm for a long time, has been told by the farmer the FLO has rang him and told him they don't want people detecting on the farm. This has been comfirmed by the FLO. I find this so wrong as we keep them in there job.  

"We keep them in there job" seems rather to be missing the point about why they are doing the job they do - at a cost of fifteen million quid to the rest of us - and suggesting that the PAS should jolly well keep "there" noses out of what the tekkie feels does not concern them. Others share such sentiments of entitlement.  Member "Jason5223" - a prime example of the effects of PAS outreach in Swindon, Wilts, reckons/asks (Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:38 pm) :

Unless the land is or becomes scheduled I don't see how the FLO can enforce it. Perhaps I'm wrong? I also think the FLO sticking his / her beak in could result in a lot of finds going unreported in their area as detectorists will worry the same may happen on their permissions. 

"Janner53" down in Devon (Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:54) agrees:

That's the exact same thing i thought of Jason after reading Pete's opening post. Will put a lot of people off reporting finds for fear of losing their permissions.  

"Aurelia" (Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:32 am) reckons the FLO is "just trying it on" and advises that "Holedigger Pete or your farmer" on behalf of his friend, "need to call the FLO to ask why". How remiss of the Kent FLO for not explaining why directly to the finder concerned, surely that is what "outreach" to PAS-partners is all about.

So, once again, the moment we see a FLO saying something about best practice and artefact hunters threatening not to report finds to them. It is as if they are showing finds to the FLOs as a favour to them and if the FLO does not agree to them doing 100% exactly as they want, the artefact hunter will have no qualms but to withdraw the "favour". This is a pattern which has been repeated throughout the history of the interactions between the PAS and its so-called "partners". This is what you'd see if the PAS would make available the archived discussions of the forum they once used to use to interact with the public. They will not of course because there for all to see is why their activities towards instilling best practice have all along been much curtailed by the crippling effects of such threats. Tekkies imagine they have their "partners" over a barrel and certainly there is very little evidence that for the last fifteen years the PAS has been doing anything much to disabuse them of this idea.