Six Years Ago

All together now, "artefact
collecting? Oh, let's not talk about that"

Six years ago the CBA's Education Project Officer suggested that discussing current policies on artefact hunting and their effects on the archaeological record was a waste of time on 'Britarch', an academic (sic) archaeological discussion list and how members should find "something more interesting to debate - how about why are there no fish being eaten in Iron Age Britain?" (Andy Holland Fri, 8 Aug 2008 12:08:25). So - not having much of an interest in ichthyology - I stopped using the CBA's discussion list and decided to keep most of my writing on the topic on my own blog (started Saturday, 12 July 2008 - first post here). Basically since then, there has been very little in the way of public discussion of metal detecting issues from the CBA, and certainly nothing from its Education officer Mr Holland (who as far as I know never solved his problems with Iron Age fish). And if you want to find out what the problems are with PAS, portable antiquities, British policies on them and a whole host of subjects, the last place you will go today is the CBA website, where the section on portable antiquities has not been updated since the times of Boudicca (who most likely ate few fish).

British archaeologists have a wholly ambiguous attitude towards artefact hunting, on the one hand treating the hobby as in some way an equivalent of archaeology, but on the other hand singularly uninterested in discussing any aspect of it in any detail in terms of its relation to archaeology and the archaeological record.