Artefact Hunting in Austria, for the Oxfordshire FLO

Since at least one soon-to-be-Brexited FLO over in PAS-land is deeply interested in the debate in Austria over Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record and got the hump with me when I tried to explain that it's not by any means as simple an issue as she was trying to present it, I thought I'd revisit some old posts on precisely this topic which she'll presumably be unfamiliar with. When she's read them, perhaps she would be so good as to tell me where I was wrong here. Unless she wants to join Raimund Karl in the academically-dubious tactic of saying that anything which does not fit the one-sided picture they wish to paint 'can reasonably safely be ignored'.

A series of ten posts discussing an article on the topic (PACHI Sunday, 8 January 2012)

Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (II): Preservation of the Archaeological Record
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (III): The “Jolly Good Collector” Model
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (IV): Unreported Finds by “Members of the Public”, i.e., Artefact Hunters
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (V): The Rhinoceros in the Room, Statistics and Facts
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (VI): Artefact Fetishism
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (VII): The Scale of Erosion Caused by Artefact Hunters in Austria
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (VIII): : The Motivations Behind Artefact Hunting?
Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (IX): A Solution

Professor Karl, The PAS and the Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (I): Introduction

This followed an earlier one on a related issue: How Many Active Metal Detectorists Are There in Austria? 
(PACHI Thursday, 8 December 2011) - Sam Hardy now has published other  estimates. 

Then after the block discussing 'Highway to Hell' 

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Debating Denkmals and Denkmal "schutz", Illegal Artefact Hunting and the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Raimund Karl and the "Graue Schafe"

Raimund Karl's response is pretty disappointing 'There certainly are some fundamentalist archaeologists, too, who condemn any trading of antiquities regardless of the specific circumstances of the individual case, but those can reasonably safely be ignored. '(Tuesday, 7 June 2011 Closed to Debate in Bangor). IOgnoring an issue will not make it go away, and there is nothing fundamentalist in decrying the current situation concerning the commercial exploitation of archaeological sites for collectables, and Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record.