Saturday, 24 October 2020

More British Looting: Essex Metal Detectorist Caught in Flagrante

Though fans will tell you "only a small minority go artefact hunting illegally", as legal access to land that has not already been hunted out dries up, more and more are going to disregard the niceties and go out reasonably confident they'll not be caught, or if they are, the police will not make the charges stick. This guy overtested his luck. The police already had evidence to make an arrest, now look what happened:
Oops. Congratulations on Essex police for such a piece of serendipity. What time was the attempted arrest, and why did the people at home not advise Mr Hawker by phone that the police were on the way to him? 

And of course the thread below is full of "detectorists" condemning the thief, who "gets the hobby a bad name". But I would be interested to hear why they think that is, because the damage done by this guy doing it illegally is exactly the same as that doing it legally by UK law and not reporting, or doing it legally by UK law, hoiking out the stuff without proper observation and recording of the context and reporting it. All we get from the latter are loose objects, and not in any form real archaeological information (any FLO or British arkie* wishing to contest that is welcome to try in the comments below). There simply is no difference in real archaeological terms between artefact hunting that is legal by the UK's wet-paper-bag antiquities "legislation" or illegal by the same measure. Open to discussion. 


*or "Bonnie and Suzie", Andras Minos and Pieterjan too. Go on, I know you want to. 

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3 comments:

  1. Brian Mattick25 October 2020 at 01:17

    "the damage done by this guy doing it illegally is exactly the same as that doing it legally by UK law and not reporting".

    Exactly. Should be in red as I can't recall a detectorist, archaeologist, museum professional, Culture Minister or PAS employee saying so, even though the legal non-reporting damage is vastly greater.

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  2. Paul Barford25 October 2020 at 01:59

    As you suggested, in red. So, do you reckon the assorted archaeologists will come along now to tell me I'm wrong?

    Maybe in fact they all think that this is exactly how it is and they are too scared to say that instead.

    Whatever it is, they're not going to actually debate the point here or anywhere really, they feel it's "beneath them" maybe.

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  3. Brian Mattick25 October 2020 at 02:28

    I would think they know damn well licit damage dwarfs illicit damage, it's not a very challenging academic concept but they are presumably hobbled, willingly or otherwise by the PAS corporate stance: "We have to be pragmatic as otherwise the poor dears will turn to more nighthawking".

    It's a pretty silly theory upon which to base a policy, as they mostly wouldn't, being frit, and those few that did could be dealt with until they didn't, like the egg-colectors. So the pragmatism is based on a fallacy. Quite a serious and sad charge.

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