"My Friend Offered me onto his Permission"

Smirking - brought them
back the next day

Excavation of archaeological contexts by an illiterate. Can you imagine what a report would look like were these two to responsibly write one? Anyway here from "there" own mouths (Daniel Duke and Peter Major, 'My Friend Offered me onto his Permission' Minelab wreckers 25 Jun 2020):

As the tittle say my friend offered me onto his permission armed with his brand new 15 inch coil and with mine we were ready for a day detecting with looking at the land looked nice started off in a little field with a phone mask not a problem with the Equinox 800 and my friends equinox 600 with a few adjustments we were detecting after hunting for a couple hours and me getting couple of artefacts and a silver sixpence and my friend with couple more finds we moved on to the next field for another hunt and with being further away from the mast with tamed both Equinox up to full sensitivity for the hunt after a hour or 2 with not much coming up I moved back into the first field while my friend work his way down to the same field. I heard him shout me dan come here So went to see him for him to say theirs bronze in the hole so with moving a bit of dirt and looking at him I said that’s an axe head Bronze Age axe head at that he was gobsmacked and he started to unearth the Bronze Age axe head as it came to light the excitement was real with him only detecting for 10 months was a day to remember so I thought let’s check the hole only to hear the pin pointer go off again I said to him theirs more so we started to move more dirt from the hole only to see the edge of another axe head so we contacted our friend and detecting expert Graham Rushton from UNERTHEDUK for advice then about 3 inches below the first one as we got that one out just to the left hand side there was another signal from the pin pointer I said to him theirs another we were jumping with joy with what we were unearthing and for Pete to discover this as his first Bronze Age find was summit else so we carried on to dig the third pal stave axe head out the hole and with more checking there was no more signals petes face was a picture to what he has discovered we were both amazed and a day we will never forget if finding a hoard of 3 Bronze Age pal stave axe heads dating to 3500 years old we went home that day thinking what else could be their

There's the British school system for you. Now how are "archaeologists going to train" people like these who cannot distinguish there/their or use punctuation? There's more:

Different patina, will the landscape
 history of this area ever be known?

This lead us to have another dig to the same farm a day later with the heat this day and detecting coming harder we ventured into a new field not far away from the farm house after searching for around 3 hours with just the odd bit of lead and a copper George the third I came across a strong signal on the Equinox 800 in all direction and it being a signal for a long item so thought something big here so started to dig my plug in this hard rocky ground got down to about six inch and seen bronze I thought no it’s happening again is it a axe head so after moving more dirt I saw a point and thought what is this and slowly removed more dirt to reveal more of the artefact and knew what it was so shouted Pete and said we hit it again mate As he came running over and I removed the artefact from the ground only to reveal it to be a Bronze Age spear head in near mint condition and sharp as hell I couldn’t believe what I just found on the same farm me and Pete were over joyed jumping around What a couple of days we had detecting was unreal all finds are getting reported to flo and the farmer is over joyed with the discover on his land this is all to be continued with future digs We would like to thank Greame Rushton from UNEARTHEDUK for the advice he gave us on the hoard and spear head we found his advice has been invaluable and we’re we purchased our Minelab Detector’s and accessories

One wonders what "advice" this "expert" gave, and why (if they are going to report these loose items  to the FLO), why they did not contact the PAS for that "advice". It's what it is there for, to encourage best practice. 

My reader who spotted this and realised that it referred to sites local to him notes ruefully: 

"You could, until about 15 years ago, count the number of detectorists in this area on fingers and toes. Then the PAS started to publicise themselves through every treasure find and now we must have more than ten times that number [...] Don't they look pleased with themselves with their smug 'aren't we the dogs bollocks smirks'.."

It is going to take a long time to undo the effects of the PAS insistence that 'anything goes' as "responsible detecting". What these blokes did is damaging and therefore NOT (I don't care what PAS says) anything like a responsible way to treat the archaeological context these items were hoiked from. But they'll go along to Lancashire Museum when the pandemic is over and most likely get a pat on the head.