Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Hoard Hoiking

If you live in Bonkers Britain you will hear a lot from the public Scheme PAS (paid for with your money to 'partner' the erosion of your historical record) about how "responsible detecting" in the hands of "enthusiastic history hunters" is leading to "great" increases in our knowledge about the past. This is, however, only part of the story. There is a lot they are not telling you: 'Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Why PAS Outreach is Failing'.

Here's Terry Bull [Sat Sep 27, 2014 8:00 pm] from Orpington in Kent (FLO Jennifer Jackson land) on hoard hoiking (as in here and here):

"I think they did the right thing[,] I want to dig what I find that's way (sic) I go[. T]hey put the hard work in[,] so [I] can't see the problem[. G]ood for them to have found a hord (sic) that's grate (sic) if I find a hord (sic) I'm digging it out to and have a look inside to see what's there lol"

As Nigel Swift ('Is it time to pay metal detectorists to behave?') points out about the scandalous picture of Northern hoard hoikers posing with their ‘Dunelme hoard’ handiwork:

There’s a video of them digging this up. Twenty one detectorists were seen or heard on that but only one is heard to be suggesting the archaeologists should be brought in, and he is quickly shouted down. So that’s less than one in twenty. Their excuse was that if they left it overnight “someone” (by which they probably meant one of them!) would steal it. And no-one was prepared to stay and guard it. Yet Mr Egerton was.

TAKE A GOOD LOOK at this behaviour, for these are precisely the sort of people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a "policy".