Having Cake While Eating Cake

Archaeologist Tom Lucking hit headlines in 2014 when, while he was still a student at UEA, he unearthed a seventh century haul of Anglo-Saxon gold in a grave buried at a field in Winfarthing. Now he has struck treasure again, after discovering a silver gilt brooch dating from the 11th or 12th centuries in a field near Wymondham, Norfolk in September, the subject of a recent Treasure inquest  (BBC Treasure find man unearths rare brooch in Norfolk 5 May 2019)

A man who unearthed a £145,000 Anglo-Saxon pendant has found more treasure dating back about 800 years. [...]  Mr Lucking, 27, [...] works as a full-time archaeologist but found the pendant and silver gilt brooch while metal detecting in his spare time. [...] Mr Lucking has been metal detecting since he was 11 and has discovered other items classified as treasure.  

Archaeologist Tom Lucking with some of his finds. Picture: Anthony Kelly

ICOM and the Museums Association ethical guidelines preclude curators from collecting material relating to their professional work, so a museum archaeologist would not be able to do this. It does raise real conflicts. Not least of which is the difference between archaeology and artefact hunting. Are they both just different names for the same thing ("digging up old things"?). I think not, but Mr Lucking may disagree with me. How does he cope with the dichotomy between the times "when they pay me" and he's concentrate on a careful and holistic observation and documentation of the context of the objects as evidence, and then in the times "when they don't pay me" when he can just go out there and hoik the same types of things from their context - thus destroying evidence, and pocket them? Is that like a priest who justifies himself by saying he did fondle the choirboys, "but not when it was in the middle of a Holy Mass"? I think a clergyman is either a fornicator or is not a fornicator, he can't be a part-time fornicator. Is it the same with archaeology? CIfA where are you on this question?