Tuesday 25 February 2020

The Life of a Commercial Artefact Hunting Rally Organiser in the UK


Lynda Abertson of ARCA spotted this and thought the whole thread might interest PACHI's readers. Its a complaint against commercial artefact hunting rallies and the number of people organising them and taking part in them. This is a whole aspect of the current shape of the hobby (those 'citizen achaeologists') that the PAS and its supporters stubbornly refuse to talk about at length in a pretence that the hobby is still in its 1990s form:
Shaun McNamara You have been caught red handed Zoe, and not just by me. Pink Wellies Metal Detecting has become a byword for rip off digs, no amenities whatsoever, not even a toilet on a VERY hot early Autumn day. You and your little gang of helpers have been well and truly found out.
Oh, one piece of advice, if you are going to post up fake pictures of things SUPPOSEDLY found on your digs, it might be better if you didn’t loot (sic PMB) those pictures from places like Ebay, as these are easily traced back to source. Which is exactly what happened [emoticon] [emoticon] [another twenty emoticons]
To be honest, you are not even particularly good at being a rip off merchant, i suspected you were a shyster before i had even attended your shoddy event. Your whole modus operandi, your banter etc, it all clearly speaks of someone who is after a fast buck at the expense of others [just seven emoticons this time]
Please pass on my best wishes to ‘the dynamic duo’, those two clueless middle class tarts who you employ to pretend they have made finds on your digs. I might name and shame them on here a bit later, but the night is young, as it were... [emoticon], [emoticon], [emoticon]. Some of my own permissions are pretty barren, some have been battered for decades, but your best sites make the worst of my permissions seem positively productive. Perhaps i should thank you for, on some level, reinvigorating some of my crappier sites [emoticon]
I am surprised you had the neck to come on here and attempt to defend yourself, but i am very glad that you have, all very amusing because let’s face it, you lack the intelligence, charm and wit to have done anything other than further publicise your own shady practices [emoticon], [emoticon], [emoticon].
I await your next pithy rejoinder with glee... [emoticon], [emoticon], [emoticon].
Oh, i almost forgot... when you drove away from that dig in September, was there a slight whiff of pee pee in/on your car? Asking for a friend [emoticon], [emoticon],[another six assorted emoticons].
There is no doubt at all in my mind from the language used which way that individual voted in the Brexit referendum. There is a whole thread of this over there. The point of a commercial artefact hunting rally organiser pretending that exciting things were found on a site where they were not of course is to establish their reputation in the community for 'finding good land' and encouraging more people to pay up and come next time. But of course planting finds simply irresponsibly distorts the archaeological record. Having said that, in the whole thread there is not a single piece of documentation offered that said "Zoe" and her "middle class tarts" (sic) had claimed finds that Shane and his mates had in fact located on eBay, just a lot of emoticons, resentment and misogyny.

Note that Indignant Shaun is well aware that repeated artefact hunting makes an archaeological site or assemblage barren of collectable artefacts ("battered"). Yet, he sees nothing wrong with battering it, and other areas, more and more. Now there is "responsibility" and entitlement for you.

3 comments:

Zoeeleanor said...

I am once again responding to a third party posting of Shaun McNamaras vitriolic PRIVATE messages which were wholly inaccurate and nothing more than a fantasy. My group on only one occasion, had an attendee that claimed he had found about five items on one of our digs and it was in fact proved that they were in fact found elsewhere. This was nothing whatsoever to do with me as an organiser and I cannot understand why he did it. He became the subject of some extremely unkind comments which I took offence to. He did not deserve to be vilified in the manner he suffered. I was then on the receiving end of the green eyed brigade and blocked a number of people from the group.
The Wellies is not a commercial group and I nor my partner take no money from the rally’s. All the money is given to the landowner and it is my understanding that it is donated to a charity run by the family. We have never had 200 on any rally and follow all Covid guidelines. Unfortunately there are some extremely unpleasant people who are obsessed with spreading malicious untruths b and this is a problem in the hobby today.

Zoeeleanor said...

I am once again responding to a third party posting of Shaun McNamaras vitriolic PRIVATE messages which were wholly inaccurate and nothing more than a fantasy. My group on only one occasion, had an attendee that claimed he had found about five items on one of our digs and it was in fact proved that they were in fact found elsewhere. This was nothing whatsoever to do with me as an organiser and I cannot understand why he did it. He became the subject of some extremely unkind comments which I took offence to. He did not deserve to be vilified in the manner he suffered. I was then on the receiving end of the green eyed brigade and blocked a number of people from the group.
The Wellies is not a commercial group and I nor my partner take no money from the rally’s. All the money is given to the landowner and it is my understanding that it is donated to a charity run by the family. We have never had 200 on any rally and follow all Covid guidelines. Unfortunately there are some extremely unpleasant people who are obsessed with spreading malicious untruths b and this is a problem in the hobby today.

Paul Barford said...

MMM. > We have never had 200 on any rally and follow all Covid guidelines.<
I think you are answering the wrong post here...

It is pretty astounding that you do not have the self-awareness to realise how your fellow detectorist Shaun comes over here and that you really need not be at all concerned about what this utter lowbrow jerk says here.

> My group on only one occasion, had an attendee that claimed he had found about five items on one of our digs and it was in fact proved that they were in fact found elsewhere. This was nothing whatsoever to do with me as an organiser and I cannot understand why he did it. <
It is called laundering and goes on quite a lot I suspect.

> He did not deserve to be vilified in the manner he suffered.<
Because? Tell a lie and be found out and then... what, would you say? Suffer no consequences?

The whole idea of this "responsible detecting" is reporting truthfully where something comes from. If he's an irresponsible detectorists in your group, he deserves not only to be criticised, but also thrown out as a bad apple that spoils the whole barrel.

> All the money is given to the landowner and it is my understanding that it is donated to a charity run by the family.<
So? That makes full scale looting of the archaeological record in some way OK does it? And if money is changing hands, in what way is this transaction "not commercial"?

 
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