"Open Letter To Arrowhead Hunters"

There is an interesting 'Open Letter To Arrowhead Hunters' by one ArcheoWebby  (Chris Webster [?] April 30, 2013) on the "Random Acts of Science" blog. This is well worth reading by all who profess an "interest in the past". I'd be interested in seeing an artefact hunter's (reasoned) response:

Living in Nevada, there isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t hear someone that either has lived here for a significant portion of their life, or all their life, and about how many arrowheads they have in a bucket back home. It makes me angry and sad when I hear about it. What’s even more sad is that they have no idea that what they did is/was wrong. The only one to blame for that is archaeologists and our failure to educate. [...] It’s almost impossible to walk out in Nevada and not find some sort of artifact. The challenge is to not pick it up.

The author then includes a section "Why Shouldn’t You Pick Up Artifacts?":

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t pick up artifacts. One of the most obvious reasons is that they don’t belong to you. [...]  All of us share a history that is tied to the artifacts lying on the landscape. [...] they don’t belong to you–they belong to all of us. 

This is followed by an interesting sidelight on the "only picking stuff up from the ploughsoil/ surface/ not very deep" argument which is often trotted out in defence of artefact hunting of all types. The archaeologist describes a large lithics site found during a survey conducted prior to earthmoving to widen a road in central Nevada.  The site was covered with lithic artefacts, but not a single diagnostic one (useful for describing the date of the site and the hunting economy of its inhabitants)
We didn’t find a single diagnostic point or point fragment. The only possible reason for our lack of success in finding a diagnostic artifact was that they were all picked up.The lack of diagnostic finds meant that there was no reason why the geothermal company did not build a road right through it without prior investigation or any other mitigation methods (such as going round it). Artefgact hunting leads to destruction of sites in more ways than one, it seems.

Finally, you shouldn’t pick up artifacts because others would like to enjoy them too. Why should you be the only person that gets to enjoy the history and artistry associated with the artifact? Why can’t others be mesmerized by the stories that artifact could tell? Why can’t others have the ability to sit down on that landscape and imagine the past and the people that lived there and used that artifact? It’s selfish and insensitive to think that you should now posses that artifact. 

Of course collectors try to pretend to themselves that they are "protecting" the object, though the way this often happens is that they are immediately (or relatively quickly) divorced from the information of the precise circumstances of finding, so rather than protecting part of the archaeological record, it has been lost. The text also has a brief section section on "Artifact Collecting and Metal Detecting" and draws the obvious parallel between arrowhead-garnering, pot-digging and artefact hunting with electronic detection tools. The author raises some questions about the notion of "ownership" of finds, and the issue of the wanton destruction of the archaeological record on private land: 

why is it OK to destroy archaeological sites on private land so you can beef up your own private collection and brag to your fiends online? 

Finally the author discusses "How Archaeologists Can Help First". he suggests building links between artefact hunters and collectors:

In a perfect world no site location would be confidential and no one would desire to loot a site. [...] Of course, that will likely never happen in our lifetimes. The next best option is to constantly talk about the fragility of archaeological sites and how they should be revered and protected rather than looted. Destroying the market for artifacts would help too. If they weren’t worth anything then no one would loot them. Unfortunately there is always someone that collects something. That will never end. So, we have to communicate the preservation of sites to anyone that will listen. If you are a CRM archaeologist and are reading this blog then start your own blog! You have many stories that you could tell about sites that were looted or destroyed in one way or another. Tell people why that’s a bad thing and what happened to it because there was nothing for you to record.

I wonder why more British archaeologists are not doing just that?

Hat tip to Nigel Swift and David Connolly