Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Rob Nob Asks

I suspect many folk do not bother to read the comments to the posts on this blog, perhaps wisely if they are not written by Heritage Action (who often have a lot of informed comment, well-phrased). The rest are usually inarticulate and uninformed metal detectorists happy-slapping. Tekkies (and others)  repeatedly accuse me of generally not posting their comments, that is the excuse they give for not bothering to apply their minds to writing any kind of a rejoinder to the points I make. In actual fact I generally do post much of what is sent, although I prefer them to comply with the guidelines I published here).

One of the ones I posted though quite clearly not at all complying with what I asked evoked a response from a Mr Bob Nob. I'm putting the answer up here for the benefit of those who have no desire to read further than the expletives of the first deliberately-offensive comment in the thread. Mr Nob writes: "to be fair I dont belive that this is your typical "tekkie" comment". My answer follows:

I think Mr Nob, you'd find the answer to your question about "typical" attitudes and the typical manner these people verbalise them by joining a metal detecting forum and see how they write candidly about archaeologists, the PAS their thoughts on collaboration etc.

Bear in mind that several of those forums have a permanent team of moderators on the watch for and removing offensive posts, and posts which might give a bad impression of the hobby. Why would you need a filter to stop abusive comments if there were just normal folk writing about normal things in a normal manner with a normal degree of decorum?

There are over 10000 detectorists in the UK, on a forum you might hear regularly from 2-300 of them, some write with the voice of reason, many more do not. Others are downright abusive and express their hatred of archaeologists and the "system" at any opportunity.

So what can one deduce about the attitudes of the hidden nine thousand who do not take part in these discussions? How likely is it that they are ALL "voice of reason/ Guardian reader" types who sit there reading through the forum, fuming with indignation and tut-tutting at the things other tekkies say but keeping quiet?

This is an important question because the PAS was set up under the assumption that these recalcitrant artefact hunters can be "brought around" to "best practice" by gentle persuasion. The PAS spend a lot of time trying to persuade you that this is what they are achieving.

I suggest that this is a totally naive and false assumption (one costing millions of quid) because there is no way you will reach the (possibly extensive) thugwit element in the hobby by such means.

So how big is that element, and how deep do the divisions go? Well, you will seek in vain for the answer from the PAS. That is not one of the things they will ever be producing statistics on in order that you can see if they are spending YOUR money wisely.

That's why I suggest that the people whose money this policy is gobbling up (ie the general public) take an interest in what is going on and take a look at the forums and the actual doings and sayings of UK artefact hunters, to see what the rosy-tinted fluffy bunny approach of the PAS is actually achieving in such a milieu.

The PAS will tell you only about the good side, how "responsible" (some of) these people can be if you throw millions of quid at asking them to be. What it does not do is attempt to estimate the effects of the degree to which artefacts are being pulled out of the archaeological record in a manner which cannot be called "responsible".

That is of course the key statistic. Now, if we are discussing abusive and oikish detectorists, take a look at Heritage Action's forum (Heritage Journal, it's called). HA are one of the groups pointing this out, take a look at the timbre of the comments their forum attracts from metal detectorists (and they reject the vast majority of utterly abusive posts). Note the small number of the so-called "responsible" detectorists on that forum trying to balance the attacks by the less-decent. Their paucity is thought-provoking is it not - what exactly DO so-called "responsible detectorists" stand for, and what will they not stand for?

Take a look, and ask yourself what it tells you about the UK's artefact hunters. Comments like the one above are just the tip of the iceberg.