Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Contaminated Green Waste Again

UK's metal detectorists are again complaining about the level of metal contamination of green waste spread on fields. They've started up yet another petition. They want to "make it law for DEFRA, along with the Environment Agency, to do regular weekly tests on farmland where this waste is being spread" - and who is going to pay for that? We are not talking about a bloke with a knapsack on a bike taking a small test tube full of soil from each field, but a major scanning project with substantial travel costs and documentary procedures to be followed in each case. Massively expensive - all so metal detectorists can hoik. This petition is not doing too well, even with getting their wives, mums and kids signing, they've collected about 370 signatures (remember today there could be 16000 of them in the UK). So we have the agitation-posts, like this one from "T2DEVON" (Wed Sep 04, 2013 9:39 pm):  I've already signed this petition - but just wanted everyone to know how bad this so called 'green waste' is. Got a nice friendly farmer, gave us permission, lovely big fields. But he has just spread it with green waste. Signals absolutely everywhere! And good ones too. But its all scraps of metal, foil, flattened pennies etc. Totally ruined the field and the chance of doing any detecting on it. Absolute shame.

It has totally ruined the chances of doing artefact hunting on it. The archaeology remains unaffected (though more expensive to recover, but preservation costs money). Another member ("Jungle", Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:17 pm) finds that the additional metal in the topsoil is making it difficult for him to hoik out the archaeological evidence:  

I'm slowing sampling (sic!) fields on a new 1000 acre permission. On last outing discovered the three largest fields very close to a Roman villa and a hill fort have been contaminated. I gave up detecting on them. I spread what I had found out on a plastic bag for the farmer to see and he was shocked. He was expecting to see some nice Roman or Saxon coins which I've found in his other clean fields. He said he was going to take it up with supplier as he's getting more deliveries of the stuff. Hopefully the other clean fields I've sampled so far will be spared now he's aware.

Or maybe they too will get the archaeological evidence masked by what seems to be a very effective deterrant to artefact-hoiking by collectors. That this record is finite is admitted in artefact hunting circles. Here we have (smileys omitted) what  "mudchucka" (Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:19 pm) writes:

i have had a run in with this stuff as some of you may be aware...its no joke...an absolute killer  I am however determined to get rid of as much of it from my worst field so am doing a half hour of clearance detecting on every visit...one day it will be gone   

Another forum member (liamnolan, Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:32 pm) notes drily:

Good luck mudchukka, but of course when the day comes when all the "green" waste has vanished, so will all of everything else you want to dig up!

but "mudchucka" (Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:55 pm) is unworried by that:

Well thats because it will be at home in my t[r]easure chest

So not archived in individual archival quality bags with the precise findspot co-ordinates marked on each making it possible to determine their precise pattern in the field to be determined? This is what the problem is, these people want to hoik out the archaeological evidence from artefact spreads without any kind of hindrance, in order to make a loose pile of collected 'interesting things'. To my mind, the preservation of the archaeological evidence is better served by sites being masked off from this kind of exploitive and unmitigated (or at best poorly mitigated) erosion.

The hoikers can hardly say they are "saving the artefacts" from agrichemicals if the farmer has gone over to green fertilisers can they?

Vignette: green waste logo.