Tuesday 10 March 2020

Helsinki University Collaboration with Artefact Hunters: Vision or Hallucination?


The European Public Finds Recording Network based in Helsinki University 'represents publicly accessible recording schemes for archaeological detector finds in European countries and regions'. It aims to 'support research and collaboration between metal-detecting communities and the archaeological profession and develop best practices'... First of all Collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record involves more than just metal detectors and spades, apart from coins, the greatest proportion of artefactual material being sold to and by collectors online (for example on eBay) comprises lithic finds (for example 20 000 lots here today). This arguably is at least as important (and destructive) as metal detecting, so why is it being ignored here? Also, why are these archaeologists collaborating with artefact hunters and collectors? Should ecologists collaborate with elephant poachers? The 'vision' is dotty:
Vis­ion
As the European Public Finds Recording Network, we aspire towards [sic]:
Broad public engagement and access to the archaeological heritage at local, regional, national and European level;
A democratized approach to heritage management in Europe, stimulated through the incorporation of principles of citizen science and crowd-sourcing;
A recognition of recorded public finds as an important body of archaeological evidence for human behaviour and interaction.
Public engagement and access to the archaeological heritage involves a huge amount more than just hoiking and pocketing bits of the archaeological record. No? So what are they talking about?

Heritage management in Europe, involves a huge amount more than just hoiking and pocketing bits of the archaeological record. No? So what are they talking about?

I do not see anywhere on their page anything that justifies calling hoiking and pocketing bits of the archaeological record a "science" ("citizen or otherwise") any more than elephant poaching is a "science" (you have to find them first and know how to use the gun). So what are they talking about?

I'd like to see in Finland a recognition that just hoiking and pocketing bits of the archaeological record (recorded or not) is a collection of loose decontextualised artefacts, that does NOT form a 'body of archaeological evidence for human behaviour and interaction' any more than the 'antiquities' and 'cultures and ethnicities' sections of eBay do. So what are they talking about?

This "interaction", does that involve the application of ethnic labels to loose artefacts on the basis of formal and decorative traits and their plotting on dot-distribution maps as in the days of the nineteenth century rationalisers of collections? The former has a long tradition in Finland, such as seen in the work of Johan Reinhold Aspelin (Antiquités du Nord Finno-Ougrien Helsinki 1877-1884), and Gustaf Kossinna. I think though that eastern European archaeology, as a whole, has moved on a lot since then. But has the University of Helsinki? We will see what this narrow 'vision' of theirs produces in the long run.

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