Whatever happened to the "Glasgow Fourth"?

The article by Ulph on combating the trade in illicit art and antiquities downloadable from the Trafficking Culture website argues that one of the most important steps which any nation can take to combat the illicit trade is to:

ensure that their domestic law provides clear rules in relation to ownership of undiscovered antiquities.

Of course that is precisely what the UK lacks. There is no search permit legislation in most of the UK which assigns ownership of the removed artefacts resulting from that activity beforehand, but there is what has been called the "Glasgow Fourth" which is potentially a way forward here in getting a closer definition of what we mean by the term "illicit antiquities" (or not-licit antiquities) in the context of the current legislation of the UK. This suggests that a correct interpretation of the law in the UK is that an artefact hunter (such as a metal detectorist) is guilty of illicit activity [and therefore the artefacts coming from it are by definition themselves illicit] if they have:

Searched on private land with permission from the landowner, but then failed to disclose what was found, especially items of financial value or items of Treasure, constituting theft from the landowner and/or the Crown. 

I have discussed the practice of "wellying" as it is called in such circles a number of times on this blog:

"UK Metal Detecting Under the Microscope: The Significance of Glasgow's New Definition of "Nighthawking"...", PACHI, 24 August 2012

"Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Glasgow Fourth and the Theft of Artefacts", PACHI, 12 September 2012

"Focus on UK Detecting: "Standards" Site Seeking Opinion on the Glasgow Fourth" PACHI, 14 September 2012

"UK Archaeologists on Record on the "Glasgow Fourth"...", PACHI, 1 October 2012

By the 1st October 2012 however Glasgow had quietly backtracked on its interpretation of the law in this regard, surely not out of concern for the feelings of artefact hunters:  "Focus on Metal Detecting: "Glasgow Fourth" Now Amended". The reasons for this are not explained. They forgot to add: "Four legs good, two legs better"!

 

There is a followup post on this here: "Farmer Brown writes again", PACHI, 2 October 2012. It is about wording characteristically missing from "model landowner agreements" published in metal detecting resources and questions why thinkers in one of Britain's top academic criminological institutions seem to be putting out half-baked opinions and ideas as encyclopaedic facts. 

In February I discussed real posts on a real artefact hunting forum (the original posts are now hidden of course - broken links): "Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Sixpence Snaffling and More", PACHI, 8 February 2013 about the tekkie's moral dilemma about showing the landowner what he's actually found. 

Vignette: Frances McNair (one of the Glasgow Four), "the Choice" [fragment]", which seems particularly appropriate to the position of Glasgow criminologists.