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| Someone objected to me showing a smiling metal detectorist here, so here instead is a picture of the USAF doing Washington's bidding and attacking someone |
Last year, on his first visit it the UK on a detecting tour organised by Weekend Wanderers, John Steele found a Roman burial in Buckinghamshire. He tells his own story of the discovery and I look in closer detail at the finds and their significance. John, a detectorist since 1969, lives in Colorado. He has been retired from the US Air Force for 13 years.Does the Searcher metal detecting magazine (in which the British Museum's Helen Geake also has an article this month) go through the problems caused to Buckinghamshire archaeologists by Col Steele's carefree foray in the British archaeological record? Does it tell readers that dealing with the find - on a known archaeological site being exploited for commercial purposes, the county's entire Emergency Fund was gobbled up and then there was nothing to allocate to Lenborough? Is this not an issue that should be of concern to responsible metal detectorists and written about and discussed in a magazine of this type? What is meant by responsible detecting anyway, just dig into something and let somebody else sort out the mess while the finder gets a pat on the back for shooting fish in a barrel? How much do commercial artefact hunting groups make from organizing events like metal detecting holidays for steely-jawed ex-US servicemen? How much of those profits do they pay into the emergency funds of counties where they operate to offset the substantial costs incurred in finishing the job properly? To what extent is Col Steele even aware of the extent of the problems his "dream find" caused for a lot of other people and organizations?
In any case, one of the justifications for metal detecting trotted out by the pro-collecting brigade is that these people are "learning about their past" through the activity of hoiking out archaeological evidence from sites and putting it in their pockets. Col Steele is not learning about any past at all pocketing British artefacts (note detectorist John Winter writes for the magazine describing the grave deposit itself) and Weekend Wanders is not facilitating anything much by taking money from people like him. Just what is going on here? How would you, how would the PAS, name this? How would you name this if it involved exploitive visits to other countries in other fields of human pleasure-seeking for money?
It is of course no use expecting the Portable Antiquities Scheme to be discussing this issue, but the rest of us can. Is this the way we should be treating Britain's fragile and finite archaeological heritage?
UPDATE 27th Feb 2015
Apparently in the "Searcher", Col Steele boasts "I’ve signed my interest over to the Bucks County Museum" I suppose that's a way to escape the full costs of excavation, conservation, analysis and publishing it. Now it's up to the Buckinghamshire Emergency Fund ('What the PAS Does Not Want You to Know About the Creslow Burial') and in true metal detecting fashion getting somebody else to pick up the bill - raising once again what we understand by "responsible detecting". Goodbye, good riddance and don't come back.
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| "Excavating casket" - another deep ragged hole in Buckinghamshire's past (the History blog) |
4 comments:
Insulting comment rejected. Grumpy old detectorists who send comments under assumed names trying only to advertise "The Searcher" can try another blog.
Paul you are dead wrong. I was there. The moment John realized that the find was archeologically significant, he stopped digging. The FLO Ros came on site, and professional archeologists were brought in. They excavated it professionally, and the items, site details have been preserved. The grave turned out to be quite significant historically. I do not see any professional qualifications on your site. Clearly, you delete any replies that do not agree with your narrow viewpoint. Noting the lack of comments clearly nobody agrees with you.
Marko
Paul you are dead wrong. I was there. The moment John realized that the find was archeologically significant, he stopped digging. The FLO Ros came on site, and professional archeologists were brought in. They excavated it professionally, and the items, site details have been preserved. The grave turned out to be quite significant historically. I do not see any professional qualifications on your site. Clearly, you delete any replies that do not agree with your narrow viewpoint. Noting the lack of comments clearly nobody agrees with you.
Marko
Mr Marco, I think if you had acquired a few more literacy skills at school, you might realise that the text to which this was sent as a comment was NOT about the artefact hunter not calling the archaeologists (the word has an 'a' in it). It was rather about the effects that the fact that he went onto a known site and then called in the archaeologists to clear up the mess he'd created on their budgeting. Professional archaeology costs money - and where does that money come from? The site was unthreatened, and the professional intervention gobbled up funds which were then unavailable for another project. Maybe you could read what I wrote before disagreeing with it, that way you'll look less like a moron.
This is a blog, not a 'site'. Sites are what artefact hunters destroy - and you do not need any 'qualifications' to understand that simple fact.
As you can see I did not delete your "comment". I leave it up to the reader however to discern whose view here is the more "narrow".
Actually if you look, it's the metal detecting forums where anyone who says something gets a flurry of one-liner comments underneath (replete with 'happy' emoticons) underneath all saying, 'yeah Baz I agre wiv yer M8' and other such group-building banter. Here most of the comments tend to be people like yourself who decide to write to say how much they disagree. I generally publish them for entertainment value. would say the paucity of such comments on a blog with over one and half million hits should give artefact collectors pause for thought.
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