Tuesday 6 May 2014

Surrey Searchers Metal Detecting Club


The Surrey Searchers Metal Detecting Club is an FID-affiliated group based in Wallington (which is actually on the edges of Greater London rather than Surrey), and claims to be "one of the largest, most active and successful Metal Detecting Clubs in the Southeast".
Every month we are gaining thousands of acres of new land to search and we travel all over the uk detecting in most other counties as well as Surrey. We meet twice every month and sometimes hold as many as three outings per week.
 There are galleries of their searches in Sussex (418 photos mostly of finds), Surrey (62 photos mostly of finds), Hampshire (166 photos mostly of finds), Worcestershire (225) Bedfordshire (19), Suffolk (186), Oxfordshire (166), Nottinghamshire (33), Essex (91), Kent (171) and Warwickshire (16).


In total, they've hoiked hundreds of finds from the archaeological record in a random and unsystematic manner from all over the country. And how many of them are recorded so this information is available for use? When the FLO goes to their club meetings, does he carry large scale maps of Warwickshire or Kent with him, to check the NGR of the findspot of the coins,  such as the siliquae they found on a 'club dig' last year? Or does the Surrey FLO travel with them and attend all the club's digs and record the finds as they come up? Note the distance this group is capable of travelling to find land to search, and the far-flung regions of the country which therefore contribute decontextualised artefactsto the club's members' personal artefact collections.


How many of the many, many loose finds taken away by members week after week are PAS-recorded?
 On their website there is no link to any Code of Practice, not even the FID one. To what degree, and in what ways is this activity contributing to our (everyone's) "knowledge of history" as is so often claimed artefact hunting does?


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Paul.
Did yu read my message yesterday?
You appear to have missed the point!
The FLO can't record for SS because he has been banned from the club!
Did you see the website images?(they wont load with an Internet explorer browser.You need Google Chrome)
If you did see the pictures,have you no comment to make about the montage of shots showing a hoard being unearthed from below the ploughline??Do you have no opinion on the shot of the soil and coins being removed from the pot at a different location?
Rgds J

Paul Barford said...

"The FLO can't record for SS because he has been banned from the club"? Why would that be? I find that hard to believe from a responsible club. What's going on? maybe an SS-man can come on here and explain why.

As for the hoard, I've been going on about all this for years, and the only time a detectorist ever takes note is when they want (as here i suspect) to use it to 'kick' some other detectorist. This sort of thing is par for the course, it's time there was more attention to and respect for the Code of practice for the Treasure Act, brought about by cutting the finder's rewards for each infringement.

Thank you Ms "Petard" for bringing this matter to our attention, perhaps you'd like to repeat your other queries about SS standards of best practice here (but watch libel laws, eh?), where they'd be on topic. Thanks.

Paul Zoetbrood said...

Paul,

see an interesting view from across the irish Sea:

http://rmchapple.blogspot.nl/

regards,

Paul Zoetbrood

Paul Barford said...

Paul, good to hear from you again. Yes, I wanted to do a post on that "rally", but life a bit hectic at the moment. It's a valuable article.

 
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