Sunday, 3 July 2016

British Museum Celebrates 2016 As Most Successful Year Ever [updated]

Post-dated text:
[The BM 2015/16 Annual Review contained a bit singing the praises of artefact hunters as so-called "citizen archaeologists". This was challenged by several of us. Eventually the review itself vanisthed from the Internet, but traces remained in some contemporary media accounts that were not removed. (such as this one, or this one). This is posted here for the record. 
The British Museum has released their Annual Review for 2016 revealing thatit was the Museum’s most successful year ever with nearly 6.9 million visitors to Bloomsbury (6,853,540) and a digital audience in excess of 40 million.
[..]

Museum Highlights of 2015/16

[...] Citizen archaeology is a growing phenomenon with 82,000 finds recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme last year – including finds by detecting superfan Mackenzie Crook.
And how much "suucess" have they had getting the many other hundreds of thousands of unreported finds made by so-called "citizen archaeologists " (metal detectorists) recorded?]

[Meanwhile here is the official BM definition of what archaeology is...]

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