Tweet Tweet: Debating Archaeology Policy in 140 characters

[NOTE 2nd September 2013:  After reading this, see the update here].

Following on from the artefact hunter looting at Kidderminster, readers might recall this bit:

Rob Hedge ‏@robhedge 24godz.  Don't want to tar all detectorists with the same brush, but this opportunistic looting of sites is damaging and very frustrating.

I decided to see what would happen if I challenged this view, artefact hunting is artefact hunting and in archaeological terms equally damaging (to the archaeology) whatever the time of day it is done :Paul Barford ‏@PortantIssues 17godz.  @robhedge So, there is GOOD artefact hunting and Bad Artefact Hunting then? In post-military-takeover EGYPT too? What's the difference between the two?

Long silence, then:

Rob Hedge ‏@robhedge 1 godz

@PortantIssues Whatever your views on suitability of UK law, there's a distinction between those acting lawfully & nocturnal looters of digs   [Rob Hedge ‏@robhedge 16 min  @PortantIssues In case the context was unclear, thieves broke into our compound at night with a detector and dug up a graveyard].

So, he missed the archaeological point.  Let's see how this goes down:

Paul Barford ‏@PortantIssues 1 godz

@robhedge So if they'd come onto that same site 3 years ago with the landowner's permission and taken the same stuff, it would be OK? Yes?

Silence for about an hour, then we get this:

Rob Hedge ‏@robhedge 1 min.

@PortantIssues N/A. This was in a churchyard. Rights/wrongs of PAS not the issue. Detector was a tool, like crowbar they used on our cabin.

Now I expect we could go on like that for hours. But then it's not my aim to browbeat my colleages, I'm over here wittering away in my own little corner of the Internet expressing my opinion, and if Mr Hedge wants to he can read it or ignore it. No skin off my nose.  He quite clearly is either missing or avoiding the point. It certainly is no answer to my question to say "not applicable" (see below where the question is clarified) and nobody even mentioned the "Portable Antiquities Scheme" (or metal detectors)! We were talking about artefact hunting. I asked whether if he claims there are "bad" artefact hunters (and he does not want to tar all tekkies with that brush) then it means he accepts that there are GOOD artefact hunters too. So far he's managed to say that the bad ones do things illegal, they go on his site and they metal detect in churchyards. So as long as they keep off archaeological stripped areas and out of churchyards, can we presume that archaeologist Mr Hedge has no other problems with artefact hunters? That was the point I was getting at.

Now in actual fact there is no law in Britain about metal detecting in churchyards, if they have the permission of the right authorities and promise not to dig too deep, then they can go ahead as long as its not a SAM or SSSI. So I am not sure about the relevance of that last comment.

I'll ask the last question again. If a bunch of artefact hunters (with metal detectors) got permission to hoik away at the artefacts of that particular churchyard three years before he began his research, would Mr Hedge now be quite happy to accept that they were "good detectorists" (because doing it legally), or would he recognize that the integrity of the assemblage of artefacts from the upper levels//layers of the site he is now investigating had been compromised?  Would things have been made better by all the collectable artefacts being given a (the same) six-figure NGR and a mention in the UKDFD database?

Now it just so happens that while this tweeting was going on, a member of Heritage Action took an active step, and went and visited Mr Hedge's site in Kidderminster. No guard, he reports. No fence either, he could walk right into the churchyard (the site Mr Hedge is investigating). Thus it was, just before that last message of Mr Hedge making his weak attempt to fend off leading questions, Heritage Action Chairman Nigel Swift had already been on the phone to me discussing the set of photos he'd just mailed me which very clearly show that the main detecting was done outside the excavated area. Some very clear examples of spade-dug artefact-hoik-holes. Just to be clear here, many (most of) the holes were reported to me as being outside the excavated area. So what's all this about tekkies "breaking in" to get at the site?  I'm not going to publish the photos (though I was told I could) as I know HA are going to do their own post on this later.

I would have liked however to have asked the excavator what his thoughts are on the rash of holes in the undisturbed grass next to his excavation. Is there any difference between holes dug in a site here (apart from the fact that he is now working there and its a churchyard) and holes in a site at - say - Hartlebury just down the road?

And we never did get the archaeologist's view on the relationship between artefact hunting in rural Worcestershire and rural Egypt.  Wriggle as he might, I really cannot see how he'd avoid saying that in archaeological terms, the effect is the same. Which is probably why he decided to deflect the question.

I do not expect he'll answer, few of them do, which is a shame. It is a shame that British [adjective deleted] archaeologists are in general simply not at all willing to entertain any detailed dissection of their attitudes about artefact hunting and collecting, when they would be quite willing to discuss their attitudes on a whole range of other topics (ethnicity/identity, agency, gender, queer theory etc etc.). This one topic tends to be avoided, or simply treated by mouthing the platitudes PAS disseminates among them (see above "the detector is just a tool" as if that solved anything when nobody was discussing metal detector use, but specifically artefact hunting). Another ploy used by British colleagues to avoid detailed discussion is to call artefact hunting "community archaeology" and then pretend that somebody who criticises policies on artefact hunting is in some way "against archaeology for all". That is just a crackpot argument  because quite clearly artefact hunting is not archaeology (ask the IfA).  Many British archaeologists are content to leave any discussion of the topic of artefact hunting and collecting up to the PAS (artefact hunters are their problem), but the PAS self-evidently has its own interests in presenting a certain set of pictures of the phenomenon at the expense of another, which is no substitute for a proper heritage debate.