[UPDATE] UK Detectorist Protests that he "Didn't mean it"

In denial

A few hours ago a metal detectorist said he "would not rest" until my blog "becomes digital archaeology" (see post above). On seeing himself outed here, he now behaves like a certain US president that will not accept responsibility for his own words and meekly  protests with a cliche:

I wish [...] your antiquated view to [sic] detecting to be consigned to the dustbin of history - where it belongs.

I really do not see what is so 'antiquated' about in 2020 challenging a policy about artefact hunting of the 1990s (premiership of John Major) using among other things the latest data to emerge from the PAS (born of that 'policy') as its basis. The world, and the antiquities collecting aspects of it including the market, has moved on a lot from the 1990s and will soon be moving on post-CV pandemic. There is nothing backwards looking in asking just what is being achieved/done now, and where this is all going.In fact it is imperative.

I suspect that, rather than actually finding out for himself what the issues are, like most metal detectorists, Daniel R. Scott accepts and parrots what somebody else has told him ("PAS is the future its only dinosaurs wot 'ates it M8"). The PAS is clearly not the future and the real microcephallic dinosaurs are those that stubbornly cling fondly onto the dream that it "might" one day be the solution to the UK's problem with collection-driven exploitation of the finite and fragile archaeological record. It almost certainly will not, and we need to examine why, and knowing that, find a way forward.

This blog is just one small part of that necessary discussion.