Focus on UK Metal Detecting: "Hoard Hunters": A Reaction

Hoard Hunters, Episode 1.
A guest article by Nigel Swift 

"To understand this programme you need to know the background, which many don't. Years ago Mr Brun led (jointly with a self-confessed ex-nighthawk) a breakaway group of detectorists who were unwilling to accept the “best practice” recommendations of archaeologists and PAS. He set up a rival database as an alternative to reporting to PAS or conforming with what archaeologists think is right. Not that you'll find much about all that (or his raucous attacks on archaeologists) on line as most of it was deleted from Youtube and elsewhere just prior to the launch of this series. Mr Brun now presents himself as “responsible” on the basis that detectorists alone have the right to define what responsible means. On that basis, even though they may not report their finds to PAS or conform to the official Responsibility Code, detectorists are all “responsible”! Good innit! They're entirely beyond criticism by archaeologists or anyone else for they alone decide what's the best way to behave!

 So.... when you see telly programmes about a couple of blokes with long-established connections to Minelab (for many years Mr Brun ran the "Minelab Owners Forums and Minelab Owners TV!) using new Minelab deep-seeking machines (that can go down far below plough level into archaeological layers) you needn't worry about whether that's "responsible detecting". The official Code and every archaeologist says it isn't but Mr Brun say's it's fine because he, not them or you dear Reader, is the sole arbiter of what's responsible and appropriate behaviour.

And you needn't be puzzled about who is behind the making of this programme either. Minelab is a massive US company and it wants to sell oodles of it's new deep-seeking machines in Britain. The fact the British archaeological establishment sees digging below plough level as very wrong and irresponsible would normally be an insurmountable difficulty and they wouldn't even have tried to tackle the British market with such a product. But they got lucky: They had close connections with a couple of artefact hunters leading a whole group of similar-minded detectorists who had redefined "responsible" to mean something entirely different to what the archaeologists say. So it was a perfect solution for them - they got these people to pitch an idea (with Minelab finance as part of the proposal perhaps?) which actually amounted to advertising their wretched site-wrecking machines on peak-time TV in our country in defiance of the wishes of, one would like to assume, every British archaeologist. Yet it is presented to the public as "responsible"! It's pretty neat. A real coup, The public won't realise that "responsible" as used in the programme actually means the opposite - and best of all the Minelab marketing men will have long noticed that most of the British archaeological establishment are highly unlikely to say a dicky bird about this deliberate assault upon our heritage.

I could go on about the inane jokes, the low-brow aspirations, the unappealing dialogue and the general absence of cultural values in the programme but I'm no TV critic so I won't. I'd just suggest that the programme comprises a large US Company doing Britain's heritage harm via a couple of naïve people who hold the mistaken view that good behaviour is what they alone find it convenient to say it is. Discuss".

Thank you, Nigel.

Vignette: A swift in flight, heads-down tekkies encased in their headphones rarely see such a sight in their use of Britain's countryside.