Saturday 3 April 2021

Speaking Out About Looting "for the sake of Charity" in the UK

Heritage Action have an idea how to deal with commercial artefact hunting oganisations, profiting under the pretence that they are running an operation for "charity" (HA, 'A new metal detecting reform: simple, sensible, equitable, and very, very effective!' 4th April 2021).

Soon, tens of thousands of people will resume metal detecting “for charity”. Farmer Silas Brown was spot on yesterday: in most cases neither the farmer nor the charity nor the archaeology benefit as much as they should, and that’s putting it diplomatically, so the case for reform is overwhelming. We think a simple notice on farm gates expressing what Silas suggested would do more for farmers, charities, and heritage protection than anything currently being done. Simple, sensible, equitable, and very, very effective.
They rightly point out that metal detecting rally organisers will be vehemently opposed whereas those who are concerned about the destruction of archaeological evidence by such rallies (among whom they optimistically include the Portable Antiquities Scheme) would support such a change. Though I doubt few jobsworth archaeologists in the UK would actually say so. Will UK archaeologists support this? Or are they too more interested in getting their hands on the "pretty objects" themselves?

1 comment:

Brian Mattick said...

It's not optimistic to think PAS would support such notices, it's optimistic to think they'll say so publicly. That's the whole UK protection system in a nutshell.

 
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