Sunday 26 April 2015

Fourkin' Metal Detectorists: Nighthawking at Castlerigg Stone Circle


Criminal artefact hunting in UK
The4kingdiggers aim to amuse with their frenetically jiggly camerawork, ridiculous accents, laddish antics and crudeness. Like most utterly repetitive metal detecting videos, not really worth watching, until the author "finds a stone circle" and calmly announce somebody's been detecting there recently. Not that recently that most of the holes have not almost grown over. How many pasture sites have been nighthawked like this, without anyone even noticing and nobody knowing what was taken by these collectors? This is the other side of artefact hunting that tekkies don't like talking about - yet The4kingdiggers do not seem particularly surprised that a fellow metal detectorist has been up to "something naughty". (They forgot to say on film that they "utterly condemn these people who get th' 'obby a bad name".)

The lack of any mention in the video and notes under it suggests that these detectorists having recognized the traces of illegal artefact hunting activity at a protected site did not  immediately and responsibly go to the proper authorities to report it. Probably they were afraid that if they did, the case would enter the statistics of 'unresolved cases of illegal artefact hunting', to appear in any survey and inform public opinion on the actual scale of this severe problem. And that is the last thing UK metal detectorists want...

Hat tip to Nigel Swift 


UPDATE 27th April 2015

The case was taken up by David Gill (' Metal-detecting at Castlerigg Stone Circle' Monday, April 27, 2015) with a brief discussion and a wonderful photo.  

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