PAS Double Standards

Britain destroys its own history

Heritage Action highlight a point about the PAS and its interaction with the British public that pays for their nice warm offices (Metal detecting: silence about knowledge theft is complicity. 26/01/2019). In reply I pointed out that the fact that they will not criticise named metal detectorists is an odd contrast to the way some of their staff treat critics from the conservation lobby, verging sometimes on hysteria. These institutional double standards seem to me an issue that needs to be addressed.

Heritage Action responded (heritageaction 27/01/2019 at 07:23):

As you know, PAS employees, particularly management, have attacked the Journal over many years, always on the basis we are ignorant of the facts. However, the statistics are the facts and they show that detectorists mostly don’t report some or all of their finds and our two complaints are that fact and the fact PAS keeps that fact from the public and a succession of Culture Secretaries. We feel PAS has no business attacking concerned members of the public who have every right to be resentful of the vast quantity of knowledge theft which hides behind their database. Not only do they never admit it but they never, ever use the phrase that matters most to the public and should be common parlance amongst archaeologists: mass knowledge theft.