Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Hurried Hoard Hoiking and Tekkie Reaction

It is quite instructive to look at the comments made on a metal detecting forum near you under the post about the weekend's hurried hoard-hoik. They were made by a series of people who obviously think smileys are punctuation marks and have a totally unreflexive approach to what they and their fellows are doing. Only one person asked (apparently because he'd not read the post and simply looked at the pictures) whether "professionals' had been involved (and whether the finders would be reporting a Treasure find). The rest of the comments are excited and congratulatory airheads praising the finders for hoiking the object rather than allowing archaeologists to investigate its context of deposition as the Code of Practice recommends. Let's take a look at how the milieu reacted in the metal detecting forum thread Roman hoard found on our dig today:

Now that's cool well done.

Fantastic. Great pics too. Thanks for sharing

Bloody Hell! What a result!!   Cheers Tomo A

Blimey, brilliant, fantastic find.

Brilliant find

Great result   Hope the bottom layers are gold and the middle silver

WOW! What a find! Good work on the recovery.

Even if it's not your find mate, how lucky you are to witness that. It's something most of us will never see in our lifetimes.

Fantastic thing and almost intact...  I bet the archi's will be short stroking over that one

That image is amazing, and knowing 2000 yrs ago a roman knelt in that spot and buried it for what ever reason, cd

lord lovell » Sun Sep 21, 2014 9:47 pm "nice find hope it was done by a professional and gets reported to flo " [answer: "Flo was contacted straight away and they will be dealing with it " - this was on a Sunday when the FLO was at home]

I think we all dream of finding something like that

Fantastic find Tomo, very well done to the finder and excavators ..   Keep us informed

 E Trac strikes again what a fantastic find well done and a complete pot

 Absolutely Amazing!!!!! Thank you for sharing.

 [that] was funny . Remarkable find

 what an amazing find thanks for sharing,

 Amazing

Excellent find . I wonder how many of us would have given up on that signal thinking it was deep iron. Well done to the finder for his perseverance.

 I had a sound like a coke can, but it was a coke can. Thanks for sharing that.

 Absolutely fantastically brilliant What a find   Top marks on successful recovery   Ace  
Great stuff tomo well done to finder

So far, there is not a word there, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were, that there is the slightest inkling of what "responsible detecting" or "best practice" actually would consist of in a case like this. I say "would consist of" because in reality it is almost totally a myth. That's despite all those years outreach and seventeen million pounds thrown in the mud after somebody's "wouldn't it be nice" dream.  Let us look at the realities of artefact hunting in the UK today and think of a better way of dealing with the problems it causes.

As a short term measure, I suggest anyone irresponsibly going against the Treasure Act Code of Practice should forfeiting 90% of the discretionary "reward" money. What are we rewarding this sort of behaviour for? We should be rewarding responsible behaviour, not irresponsible behaviour, and the difference is set down in a document that has been in the public domain for almost as long as the Treasure Act itself. There is no excuse for this.  
 
UPDATE 24.09.14,
The find should be known until we get more details as the ‘Dunelme hoard’