It's Basically Drain Cleaners an' My Girlfren's Peroxide [Updated]

Sparkling soundtrack and naff opening sequence on this one:

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Published on You Tube by TREASURE HUNTERS UK

Opublikowany 17 maj 2018

"It's Basically Drain Cleaners an' My Girlfren's Peroxide hair stuff, I make a mixture wiv it" and don't forget the warm soapy wa'er (that's probably non-ionic detergent, innit?). Plonk them in and they start to fizz.

He's hoping he can spend the evening with his chemically stripped copper alloy coin  'finding the story behind it' and 'in a cupple of munfs time its gonna be dark culler and won' be shiny and wiv a patina'. (In the comments is the suggestion that 'For speeding up the patination of the shiny cleaned coins you can use original Palmolive dishwashing detergent'). Note that the coins in the tray are not accompanied by any kind of labelling indicating the ten-figure grid reference of the findspot of each artefact removed from the archaeological record by this drab-voiced detectorist.

The vessel mount/escutcheon seems not to be in the PAS database - so what hope is there that any of the other finds are?


UPDATE  29th November 2018
Interestingly, the two comments this text has received so far concentrate, both of which focus entirely on the way I attempted to render this gentleman's manner of speech as a written text. Neither of these commenters did us the courtesy of supplying their names, yet we can say something about who they are by the way they construct their remarks, wonky punctuation, lack of capitalisation and all. These are not just typos. I think we can guess looking at those two brief texts that we are looking at the words of metal detectorists, many of whom do tend to write in that manner (as one can see on their forums), despite having gone through school but failing to pick up the rudiments of articulate formulation and transmission of ideas.

My two anonymous critics say I am 'bullying' the man through this text. This is 'Durham-talk' of course. But I am interested in what they do not say. This text is actually about a bloke who actually films himself and gives a running commentary to boot on how he chemically strips ancient objects with a home-made mixture of unknown (and apparently uncontrolledly variable) composition made of drain cleaners (!) and 'my girlfriend's peroxide'. From what we see we can assume that the chemicals that infused the metal core during the stripping were neither neutralised chemically (because: how?) nor removed. They remain in those objects, which - by the speaker's own admission - are not chemically stable, because he says they change colour. Now, I as an archaeologist am very worried by this type of behaviour. I put it up here as a warning shot across the bows of all my colleagues who see 'detectorists' as doing a beneficial job ('saving heritage' and 'finding stuff for us'). Many of them are doing harm to the archaeological record by removing evidence willy-nilly and some of them are doing immense harm - as here - to the objects they are 'curating'. Saved from 'the plough and agrichemicals' and then endangered by being immersed in drain cleaner? OK, I admit I thought I was being a little unfair pulling out this one lost sheep who'd obviously never read anything about how to care responsibly for the heavily corroded archaeological objects he finds, but perhaps I am not. For 'UnknownTekkie 1' and 'UnknownTekkie 2', the issue is not dunking ancient objects in a corrosive chemical broth at all, it's the way Mr Barford wrote about it. I think the fact thatb these two comments appeared within an hour of each other suggests that out there in the twilight zone of the Internet is a tekkie-forum where somone is fulminating about the way 'that prat Barford treated are M8' and I bet a bottle of Polish beer that until 6:41 in the morning on Thursday (so now), there is not a single comment in that thread on 'yes, but our fellow 'responsible detectorists' is showing himself destroying ancient objects and Mr Barford is right to draw attention to this'. Is there?

And before somebody says it, this blog is about collectors, not for them. In Britain, there's the PAS and no end of collaborative archaeologists for that.

As it happens, I am doing a lot of work at the moment professionally with conservators. They do not speak like 'Mr Coin Dunker', they quote philosophy and Cesare Brandi and talk about ketones and such stuff. They'd make mincemeat out of 'MrCoinDunker'. Conservation here in Poland is a specialised course of study that, in the institution with which I am currently collaborating, lasts five years of full-time study and supervised practical experience. There are thick books to read, exams to pass. But only after that can they independently start work with ancient objects. I am sure many educated people are aware of the degree of knowledge and experience being a conservator involves if they are not to do more harm than good, and I am sure most of them would realise that this is something to either leave up to experts (the advice of the PAS) or something to gain an education in by something less damaging to the heritage than 'trial and error'. From the manner in which he talks about what he is doing to the ancient objects in his 'care', I think it a fair assumption that 'MrCoinDunker' does not have that kind of education. Yet he goes public to show is in bald toe-curling clarity where that lack of education leads.

While I am not, in general a fan of the NCMD 'Code of Practice' (which has not a word about not using drain cleaners on your finds) I think artefact hunters might usefully pay attention to principle 9 Remember that when you are out with your metal detector you are an ambassador for our hobby. Do nothing that might give it a bad name". That probably refers nowadays much more to when they write something on a forum or make videos. These have a greater reach than what a passer-by or two can see a bloke do in the middle of a field. I would suggest that it would be worthwhile rewording that,

"do nothing that can be used by critics of Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record to challenge efforts of the compliant and complacent British archaeological community to build  a good name for us in the public eye".

Because that is what this blog is about.  A vast number of the people that are so glibly labelled by the heritage establishment 'citizen archaeologists' and 'partners' and who archaeologists suggest are gathering 'archaeological data' for them are in fact doing none of these things. British archaeology wilfully shuts its eyes to that and that is a policy that in my mind is worthy of critique and, yes, ridicule. How else are the lone critics to get the message across to a wider public when the archaeological establishment fails so miserably to step up and do that and even shout them down?