I wanted to point some US metal detectorists in the direction of what some of their UK counterparts are up to and why I consider debate on these issues is so necessary. When however I tried to provide them with a link to the Portable Antiquities Society's website it appears that it had moved. Their secret forum seems to be down too. Several of their You Tube videos are still online though.
So, what happened, did the long arm of Bloomsbury reach out to Cheltenham to have a gentle word with this group about its misleading name, did the police have a word about some of the stuff that was on their forum? Was there a falling out of the group members maybe (infighting over a hoard find maybe?) or are they in the course of transfer to a bigger and better web platform? Time will tell.
4 comments:
Hi SHIT-FOR -BRAINS, Still running my ever expanding empire, but the site has a filter a bit like you'd find in a sewage works, gets rid of the used condoms and crap before it get into the system. Rumour had it you'd died of AIDS, but it must have been one of those reoccurring dreams I keep having.
Have a nice day
That'll be Steve Taylor of Cheltenham using that offensive screen name I have asked him not to use here.
"Ever expanding empire" eh? It seems its not so much a "filter" as defunct, but have it your own way.
This is typical foulmouth trolling tekkie-talk. These are the people that want YOUR money to pretend to be "partners" in looking after the UK heritage and thus legitimise their exploitive hobby. Is this really the sort of people heritage professionals in the UK should be taking public money to attempt working with?
To the first person to reply to this post/blog, what do you think you achieve from leaving a comment like that? Do you really think being obnoxious furthers your cause? I really don't understand.
Paul, to be fair I dont belive that this is your typical "tekkie" comment. However please correct me if my assumption is wrong!
Surely you have some kind of filter to stop abusive comments before they are published, if so why did you approve it?
Anyhow I dug this site up after a quick google. Is it the same people?
http://portableantiquitiessociety.bb3host.com/
Bob
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.
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