Saturday 22 April 2017

Binning a Large Part of the Nation's Archaeological Heritage


In a rambling unfocussed post on his blog ('Cufflinks, Superstitions and the Death of the Tanner' 23 April 2017) veteran artefact hunter John Winter is candid about just how much artefact hunting actually is 'artefact rescue' as is so often claimed by its unreflexive supporters:
In all my years of swinging the coil, I have amassed quite a few odds and ends. They will be worth very little – if anything – to my descendants. When I eventually shrug off my mortal coil they’ll just see them as a nuisance and hire a skip for disposal. 
They'd be 'worth' a whole lot more to us all if they were properly documented. Is that not part of the 'best practice' the PAS should be imparting to these folk? Since 'metal detecting' has been going on since the 1970s and demographically it always was a hobby predominantly associated with males already of about retirement age, one wonders just how many of the hundreds of thousands of unrecorded artefacts that they hoiked in their day have already ended up in skips and landfills, wasting all the information destroyed in their selfish removal?


 

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Many, many millions Paul. Let's not let Mr Winter and his selfish fellows off the hook.

 
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