The lady at number nine had been going on at her husband for years to get the flower borders weeded. And when they started, they just could not stop.
On the forums, several sceptical tekkies are calling this "the same old story". Whatever can they mean? The PAS says it's a legitimate findspot - but now I realise one simply cannot trust anything the PAS says.
They decided to do the trite narrativisation here by invoking a "mystery": "It is not clear whether this was a savings hoard [that] was regularly deposited into or if the coins were buried all at once". If it had been properly excavated we would know. And what a shame it is that England does not have a public funded scheme educating finders about best practice so that when a member of the public finds something like this, while weeding, they don't think, "hang on a minute, I really should not touch this, I must call in the archaeologists". Yes it is a shame that in the UK they don't have a scheme that could actually achieve that after 25 years of not-really-trying. It's a good job that the newspaper articles reporting this are plastered by just such admonitions by the PAS, so that nobody could miss it.
The PAS is very keen not to inform public opinion and to keep quiet and be economical with the truth about its many failures, under Professor Mike Lewis, it shows almost zero initiative in improving the situation. The PAS needs a shakeup, and a new press officer.
During lockdown. What's that got to do with it?
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously since they'd not found the coins earlier, they can't have weeded that border since 1540. Lockdown gave them the time to do it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is was it the finder or the landowner that gave up their half of the reward? Or did both of them, or neither?
Normally PAS and the Treasure Registrar mention who waived* what.
ReplyDelete*Sp.?
*sp. good.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you're no met'l detect'rist. You use big words.
ReplyDelete