As the 'arable' metal detecting season gets underway in the UK and archaeoloogical sites all over the country are subjected to a relentless wave of greedy hoiking of collectable items from them, grassroots conservation group Heritage Action once again expresses concern about the lack of any kind of protection for the field in which the iconic Staffordshire Hoard was found and which it is 100% certain more important archaeological information, vital for the proper interpretation of the assemblage, still lies buried (Staffordshire joke… 01/09/2013).
Apparently the The Heritage Lottery Fund is forking out £47,000 for some "wottalotta-stuff-we-got" publicity project rather than being used to protect what is left of the archaeological context of this nationally-important site.
By this means, British archaeology is reduced to the role of institutionally-sanctioned Treasure-hunting. British archaeology sanctions and even promotes (through entering a "partnership" with artefact hoikers a policy which leads to:
- the virtually unmitigated depletion of the archaeological record,This is not archaeology, its a hoiking and fetishisation of shiny geegaws. It is fobbing off the public, who once had an interest in archaeology as a discipline, with a dumbed-down bread-and-circus artefact-centred gawp. As Heritage Action conclude:
- the location of sites of nationally important (because they are treated separately as 'Treasure') material and assemblages they have no resources to investigate properly.
- It accumulates material which there are few resources to properly conserve, document, and analyse.
- It accumulates a vast backlog of material which will never receive the full monographic publication it deserves.
Sad isn’t it?Worse than that. We have to be very vigilant over here on the Mainland to make sure that insular aberration, 'the British Disease' does not spread. The PAS have a lot to answer for, but of course they will never actually admit that.
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