Sunday 2 April 2017

Stripping a 'Productive Site' and Other Rural Crimes


Gateway to the past
Re: 2017 International MDF Forum Dig and Conference
Postby kopparberg » Sat Apr 01, 2017 7:54 pm
liamnolan wrote:
kopparberg wrote:
at the Barkby Forum Dig, on the last day when taking down the tents we found we had been sleeping over a Saxon graveyard and there was a rush to get detecting, many brooches coming up! People were turfed out of their beds so that the ground could be detected .. i remember that well ,and because of my good nature i shared the experience ,when i could have kept quiet and mopped up the whole area ,
Well done KB! I am told the nighthawks arrived a few nights later, Liam ;;z
that is the only downside with the internet and the rogue element . at least we hopefully didnt leave them much to go at.
So one group of artefact hunters rip out and pocket the bulk of the diagnostic finds from a site which means another group cannot.... where is the advantage of that if the finds are scattered and recorded piecemeal and ad hoc? Also there is no need to invoke the 'internet', participants at the rally who did not get enough Saxon goodies in the day are quite obviously perfectly capable of finding their way back to that part of the field at night.

The dangers of letting these greedy people on your land are shown by another comment in the same thread:
liamnolan » Sat Apr 01, 2017 11:05 pm
I went back to the site afterwards with Laura and her Dad to hand over the monies raised and the farmer was more concerned for his new metal gates. It seems that thieves take some pics of good sets of gates, advertise them for sale, get a buyer for them, then go and steal them on demand. I was given one name that had been on our Forum Dig, that was just heresay, Liam
One person's heritage taker could just as easily turn into a gate snaffler too.That is why one metal detectorists' code says 'leave gates as you found them'.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Point of information: "I am told the nighthawks arrived a few nights later" .... implies the nighthawks are somehow a different lot from those who were at the rally. However, the news about the Saxon pickings wasn't widely broadcast elsewhere so it's pretty obvious the nighthawks had to be rally attendees or their friends.

It's an important point, though not one you'll see PAS admitting: every nighthawk is a legal detectorist part of the time or friends of them, why wouldn't he be? The old detectorists' mantra "nighthawks ain't proper detectorists" has never made sense, any more than saying speeders ain't motorists. You really can't do the former without doing the latter.

 
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