On a metal detecting forum near you, one "Fisher1266X" writes ("
2 Denarius, 2 Hammered & Artefacts for ID Please Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:40 pm)
We
covered 3 acres of a 43 acre field (winter wheat) with the fields on
either side being 46 and 43 acres so I dont think we'll have time to
check them properly before the crop is too high!!! GMP and Déus with large coils and standard settings were used. Amongst 16 Roman coins, a couple of hammered and lots of artefacts were stacks of pottery fragments too. Here's a link to the photographs of the day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80501866@N00/sets/72157642142305635/ Please enjoy and hopefully we can have some ID's on the coins and indeed, any comments on the artefacts would be welcome too. H[appy] H[unting]
Here's my comment, and one that will be echoed by anyone concerned about the erosion of our archaeological heritage by Happy Hunters like Mr Fisher. Look at what he found in just one day's detecting, multiply that by (say) just ten lucky days like that a year, then multiply that by 8000 detectorists - then say the Heritage Action Artefact Erosion counter is "wrong". Mr King has
44 photo sets of rows and rows of hoiked artefacts on Flickr which he has posted there since he joined in January 2007. I tried to find any which had been recorded in the PAS database, but the details given in Mr Fisher's photo captions are a bit too sparse to make searching for them an easy task (and none of the captions I saw gives a PAS reference number, though we recognise the [
snapped-in-two]
Ursula badge). Perhaps Mr Fisher is a record PAS-reporter, but even if he is, can what we see in this Flickr feed really be considered "recovering history"? How can that row of hoiked artefacts be translated into a
record of the total distribution pattern of archaeological material in that 43 acre field, or any other of the fields from which Mr Fisher's collection has been made by dismantling its archaeological record?
5 comments:
I rather think he'll have more than 10 lucky days like that as surely he and his mates will be back there again and again and again until the finds rate reduces to near zero.
Isn't that precisely how the hobby works? Research, research, research using archaeological date sources, find a hotspot and work it till it's empty? Which artefact hunter stops at a point before complete annihilation? None that I've ever heard of.
His find rate here of metallic finds alone is 10x the one assumed by the Erosion Counter but as he depletes the site his daily haul will reduce so his long term average may well be closer to the Counter's figures. Think of the Counter as a snapshot of a process of exploitation moving towards entropy. ;)
Actually, correction, his finds rate is more than 40 times the Erosion Counter one (that the Head of PAS rates as "lacking credibility".
So yes, the page WILL disappear very quickly. We can't have PAS looking like they only record one two hundredth of what's found.
I have a couple of questions.
Without people like Mr Fisher detecting and making finds like these... when will it be that an archaeologist will find these artefacts from this farm that he had detected?
Shouldn't archaeologists be trying to harness the power and network of the metal detectorists instead of deploring their activities?
In my opinion, without Mr Fisher, those artefacts may never see the light and may all be destroyed by the farming tractors and what-not machines. Or eventually be converted into a city, with the land covered forever in concrete.
I am pretty sure, any funds that the Archaeologists are able to get from sponsors, if channeled to harness the power and network of the metal detectorists, will reap more results that you can imagine in the shortest of time.
You seem to want to hide behind an odd pseudonym, but I assume you are a metal detectorist.
The question here is one of conservation of the archaeological resource, and hoiking large numbers of finds out of it willy nilly and day after day, week after week is hardly what most of us would consider preservation.
Obviously, the idea of conservation of the archaeological resource is NOT to dig it all up now any more than conservation of rhinos or elephants is catching them all and putting them all in zoos to be gawped at, or shooting them and putting their heads on sticks. Why should that be so difficult to understand?
"Shouldn't archaeologists be trying to harness the power and network of the metal detectorists instead of deploring their activities?"
well, yes, in England and Wales the Portable Antiquities Scheme has been trying to do precisely that for seventeen years (which has cost over sixteen million quid - that's quite a few hospital beds worth). The problem is there is a hard core of UK detectorists who are completely immune to the idea, or just cannot cope with the mental effort of working out what conservation of the resource is and why its so important.
So, I am not sure how much longer you think this should be "tried"? Sixty years? How much will be left by the time we reach that tekkie Shangri-la? It's a nice idea, but it seems to me that in the specific circumstances of the UK detecting milieu, not a very workable one.
Ploughing does not destroy artefacts to the degree tekkie propaganda makes out. Show me the finds in Mr Fisher's haul with those fresh breaks.
UK archaeology does not generally get its financing from "sponsors".
I've actually already dealt with the points you made here a number of times on this blog, it would be helpful if you'd taken a bit of a look round before coming out with your "what ifs"? That's a bit disrespectful to me and wasting my time.
YYou are a pompus ASS
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