Thickoes 'Get There Way': They 'Got There Nashun' Back

The lowest common denominator won in Britain. Archaeology has been sacrificed to collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record and the islanders crash out of Europe. To the delight of a guffawing majority mob. Metal detectorists are among the latter. On their forums and websites you'll see the self-gratulatory messages proclaiming they belong to the 'winning' side and thumbing their noses at the 'losers' (so-called "Remoaners"). Like this one:

The UK becomes a self-governing independent nation once again; able to make its own laws, control its borders, and no longer subservient to the EU’s dictatorial commissioners. What is there not to like about leaving the EU which offers nothing but the loss of our nation and being subsumed into a federal European superstate with little democratic accountability?

Basically, it seems that whatever these fluff-for-brains folk had absorbed from what they were (poorly, apparently) taught in the Civic Awareness classes in British schools, was drowned out by dumbdown gutterpress guff. Here, Radek Sikorski (former Polish foreign minister, among other things) points out what a lot of Brits (still) do not know, metal detectorists among them.

I am criticised for questioning whether people who are at the level of cognitive and intellectual development displayed as the norm in their community by many metal detectorists can ever become 'citizen archaeologists', correctly observing, documenting, interpreting and presenting full contextual information for the loose items they hoik out of archaeological sites and soil assemblages. I suggest that readers might like to look at what these folk are writing about the reality around them over the next few days and consider whether I am not right about their reality to observe, analyse and assess information - and what that means about the "data" they produce by dismembering archaeological sites and soil assemblages in collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record.