Focus on UK Metal Detecting: The Real Significance of Bosworth Battlefield

Over on a metal detecting blog near you, a detectorist has set out to illustrate a case where the "archaeologists should step down". In a text called "it's a win-win situation" a metal detectorist bemoans the fact that although "dedicated metal detecting enthusiasts" were used in an archaeological project to locate the site of the battle of Bosworth, the portable antiquity issues bloggers are:

"curiously silent about Dr. Foard’s co-operation with detectorists, though highly vocal and insulting to amateur [searcher]s  doing the same thing elsewhere! I wonder why?"

He may well wonder. If he persists in thinking that the problem is the tool, and not what it is used for, then he'll never get it. I have long argued that the use of the anorakish term "metal detecting" is cognitively damaging, and we need to call a spade a spade and agree that the problem is not metal detector use (for they can be used to seek yesterday's lost change on beaches, smuggled sharp things at airports, or gold and meteorites in the US desert well away from historic sites).

It is one of the myths fostered by artefact hunters that they should all be considered good guys really because they can and will help in archaeological projects when asked. Frankly, there is not the slightest connection between this and their hoiking of artefacts for personal entertainment and profit when they are not helping in a survey. This is a wholly red herring argument, but one the PAS all-too-willingly highlights in its pro-collecting propaganda. The people taking part in this survey did so on the basis of a contract and they were paid. In other words they were at the time part of the archaeological project,. So much so that when one found a silver badge (The Bosworth Boar), they did not get a Treasure reward, as archaeologists are not eligible.  (Its inclusion as object number 5 in the PAS pro-tekkie propaganda programme "Britain's Secret treasures" is another manipulation of the truth, it was not "found by a member of the public" but by a professional archaeological team).

But there are two other issues here well worth mentioning, now it has been brought up by the detectorists.  The first the obvious one. The moment the news broke, nearly every news item ended with something about keeping the site's location secret to prevent artefact hunters removing stuff from the site before the archaeological project finished ("in order to spare it the attentions of amateur treasure hunters"/  "The exact location has been kept a secret to prevent treasure hunters from plundering the area" / "but the exact location was kept a secret until now to protect it from treasure hunters"). It is quite clear that it is no longer the case that "illegal treasure hunters/metal detectorists" are seen as the sole problem for the integrity of an archaeological site. 

The second point is far more interesting. We are told by their supporters that artefact hunters allegedly hunt (allegedly because I do not think this is wholly true) in "areas archaeologists would never go" and therefore they "find new sites" for archaeologists. They allegedly "report their historically significant finds" and they also "research" their area to find spots to search. If all this was true, we would not have to wait until an archaeological project was set up in March 2009 to search some fields which documentary research suggested could have been the real site of the battle. Metal detecting has been going on in the UK since the early 1970s. For 35 years no metal detectorist found the surface evidence of the site of the Battle of Bosworth, even though the site is strewn with metal objects.  How can this be, if all the detectorists and their supporters claim is true? They cannot recognize fragments of arms and armour from the 1480s?

This map is a portion of the map of PAS records up to, so in the period preceding and including the four year archaeological project which in the end located the battlefield. The projection of the four red marks in the margin cross at the battlefield site. It is clear that the battlefield in the years preceding the project is right in a thick concentration of dots. They in turn are the result of two factors, metal detecting/finding has been taking place in the area at some intensity and the finders have been reporting some of their finds with an intensity greater than the areas around. Yet, still the battlefield was not identified. Why? My suggestion is that this is one more actual situation which indicates that the junk arguments produced by the artefact hunters and their supportive 'partners' are simply just that, junk arguments based largely on wishful thinking and anecdotal evidence, but not supported by any real evidence.  

Archaeologist Glenn Foard posing with a sword (after prolonged contact with tekkies)

Finally, here's the sad thing. The metal detector survey was only a few seasons. They used discrimination, rejecting all 'iron' signals. There is probably a lot of stuff still in those fields and the areas around. Some more boar badges and other ornaments, many more of those highly important early cannon balls. All of which, properly plotted in detail considerably more than a six-figure or eight-figure NGR would add to that dot distribution map, could be interpreted by the techniques of battlefield archaeology. Unfortunately it's not going to be. What's almost certainly happening is that on certain moonless nights cars are drawing up in the dusk, parking a little way beyond the site and dark-clad tekkies are sneaking out eager to get themselves some 1480s militaria for their collection, a cannon ball or two a spur maybe, to take away and dream. Never mind the fact that the study of the site has only just begun.

And of course most battlefields are topsoil evidence only, it's all in the ploughsoil, in this case where it has been since August 1485.

"We used archaeology to solve the Bosworth problem"

UPDATE 30.08.13:
Note that the metal detectorists who raised this topic, instead of addressing the points made here in this post, in a tacit acknowledgement of their validity are desperately trying to deflect attention to one object found, the "Bosworth Boar" and my alleged muddling of it with another one. This is the typical tactic of portable antiquity collectors in general.