More PAS dumbdown masquerading as cutting edge archaeological outreach
13 lisJust finished the record for this exquisite little medieval mirror case, complete with glass fragments. These are fairly common finds and suggest that the medieval individual was just as vain as the rest of us: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/925095 …
and they ate bread and cheese, and went to the toilet, just like the rest of us. "Amazing innit, nuffink's changed..". One day perhaps the FLOs will get it into their heads that this is not the kind of patronising guff we need to get archaeology across to the general public, not all of whom have the minds of eleven-year olds.
In addition to dumbdown presentation, there is also a concern about the reliability of identification caused by the contamination of foreign artefacts.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was collecting last year a whole load of references from the database of what seem to be 'stray' Eastern European finds on the database, I suspect that in the case of small metal finds these may be the result of bulk buys from (for example) eBay used to 'seed' fields used for club digs and rallies - which of course lay in the fields long after the event was over and forgotten about. I'll write it up one day.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, rally seeding is another problem that hadn't occurred to me.
ReplyDeleteFrom a PACHI post a while back:
ReplyDelete"If you look at the PAS database with an informed eye, you can see a disturbingly high number of items recorded in it which are similarly out-of-place. I was looking at the corpus of Alexandrian issues a few months ago in connection with ACCG lobbying, many seem modern loses or 'plants' (see here too), raising issues of contamination of the PAS database. David Williams' brooches drew my attention to a lot of other material of probably and potential Balkan/Danubian origins found in the fields of England. This could be interpreted as an indication that a lot of seeding of club sites has been going on with stuff bought as bulk lots on eBay and the redeposited material recorded as bona fide components of the British archaeological record by FLOs happy to boost record numbers and probably largely ignoring the question of how many of the objects got there.
If however the PAS does not carry out quality control of its 'data' (and now with the advent of lightly-'trained' karaoke recorder volunteers), those 'data' are worth very little as evidence of anything except the habits of contemporary metal detectorists and collectors."
Doesn't it look like a powder compact with a mirror?
ReplyDelete