PAS Don't Discover a Mistake Pointed Out Online Four Years Ago - How Will They Deal With This One?

More innaccuracies in PAS database

Just a few days ago, PAS caught up with a mistake that they made in record NMS-7EF821 eleven years ago. For eleven years the PAS database has been showing innaccurate information to the public that pay for it. David Knell eventually picked them up on it in a post he made a week ago on his blog ('How reliable is the PAS database? (Part 2)' Ancient Heritage Friday, 16 November 2018 . Only after I too wrote something on its basis (PACHI Thursday, 22 November 2018 'PAS Discover a Mistake - Look How They Deal With It') did some anonymous amender actually get round to half-heartedly making an addition to the original ("Recent online comments have made it quite clear that this identification is incorrect and ..."). And there things stand at the moment. I reported a further omission to the record through the "members of the public please report our errors to us" button at the foot of the page two days ago, but nothing has happened... 

Now, considering that the PAS do not read this blog on principle, one might assume that the "online comments" to which this was a reaction were not this blog. But it's a mystery what they were using as a source because neither would it have been the original article of David Knell. We can say this with some certainty because as anyone can see, that text is clearly labelled "part two". That would suggest to the thinking person that there must be a "part one" - and indeed there is an inline reference to it in Knell's text. So its just a mouseclick away.... a monkey could find it. The text is called 'How reliable is the PAS database?' and it can be found on the Ancient Heritage blog under the date Wednesday, 4 June 2014. this one was written four yeasrs ago. Four years and not a single one of the PAS ('really interestid in th' 'istry) partners and supporters has ever come across it and alerted the PAS to its contents. I see that blogs called "Ancient Heritage" are not on the reading list of 27000 UK metal detectorists. And that's a shame as one of them could have told the PAS they'd got it disturbingly wrong again. 

Let's have a look at the concerns David Knell starts off with mentions of something I had been writing about earlier that had raised my concerns, but which in fact has been passed over in silence in the intervening years by both coin collectors/dealers/lobbyists as well as archaeologists, the 'British-found Alexandrian Tetras Question' (check it out, it's an important issue). Here's David Knell on it:

recent examinations (here and here) of the database used by the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) to record archaeological artefacts found by members of the public in England and Wales, Paul Barford, a British archaeologist based in Warsaw, noted that several of the coins he spotted in his search had a questionable origin. Since the artefacts do not derive from scientific excavations, perhaps a degree of unreliabilty is to be expected but some results are quite alarming. Some objects are clearly not derived from the archaeological record of England and Wales at all but are likely to be modern imports from another country altogether. While a proportion of these were perhaps lost by a modern collector or discarded by heirs unaware of their value (I know of an ancient Egyptian ushabti that now lies buried somewhere in a local landfill), some of them are likely to have been deliberately 'planted' as a joke or their findspot fabricated to enhance their resale price on eBay (a PAS record suggesting a British find raises financial value considerably). It is not difficult to see how the PAS database could also be used to launder foreign artefacts lacking a licit provenance.

 and we can see the value placed on the supposed 'British' finds of the tetras by a special interest group. David spotted the same phenomenon in a class of artefacts that he himself is especially knowledgable, pottery lamps (he gets annoyed when I call them 'oil lamps'), which is a rather esoteric field. Look at what he reported he'd found four years ago on the PAS database. 

One of the Roman lamps was recorded as a "chance find during metal detecting" in Essex. That chance find would be more credible if the lamp was not a Syro-Palestinian type (Kennedy Type 5) found almost exclusively in the Levant and not brought into Britain as popular tourist souvenirs until modern times.

Another lamp, also described as "Roman", is recorded as having been found in Kent and only "identified from photograph". In fact, the lamp is not Roman at all; it was made during the Hellenistic period (more precisely the 3rd century BC) in the Eastern Mediterranean. While nothing is impossible, it is extremely unlikely that it ever formed part of Britain's ancient archaeology.

The Essex lamp [ ESS-83CBC4] was recorded by Caroline McDonald as long as 13 years ago and nobody spotted it, the Kent one [KENT-D01334] was recorder by Laura McLane also in Essex and also 13 years ago. Was it the same 'finder' bringing objects into COLEM to 'launder' them? And if so, what a shame it is, isn't it that without privileged access, one cannot check what else that finder or those finders also brought to those two FLOs to include on the database as reportedly local finds.... I'd be interested to know what checks were made to verify this at the time and what plans the PAS now have to verify those other finds brought in by those specific people and their associates thirteen years ago and since, and will we ever learn if any records are 'purged' as a result (transparency PAS).

Kennedy type 5 lamps are dated to the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The reference is Kennedy, Ch. A. 1963, 'Development of the lamp in Palestine', Berytus 14, 1961-63,2, p. 67-115.

I think it is worth repeating part of what else David Knell wrote in that post four yeears ago as it has lost none of its relevance and, disturbingly, remains an issue totally ignored and unaddressed by the PAS and its supporters:

At any rate, that's just a quick glance at the limited number of Roman lamps recorded. I have no idea how many, if any, of the metal finds (buckles, fibulae, keys, coins, etc.) were actually modern imports from the Balkans and elsewhere. From what I've seen so far, my confidence in all of them really being found in Britain is not high. The PAS system is often touted as a perfect panacea to unrecorded looting - and a model for other countries to follow. To be fair, I suspect it was only ever envisaged as a pragmatic compromise, a form of 'damage limitation' to appease the metal detecting lobby, and it also works well for genuinely chance finds. It could be argued that without it the situation would be worse and no finds recorded at all. But sadly, the PAS is inherently open to abuse. What serious scholar can rely on the PAS to compile studies when so many of its records are likely to be polluted with false claims? Is the scholar expected to take pot luck, perhaps basing the study on the sheer number of finds in one location and desperately hoping that some laundering dealer didn't pretend to have found a dozen Bulgarian brooches in a small area? Or realistically, in many cases where accurate data is a must, is the whole system too flawed to be reliable enough for practical use?

Discuss.