A blog commenting on various aspects of the private collecting and trade in archaeological artefacts today and their effect on the archaeological record.
Monday, 25 July 2022
More Data About Artefact Hunting Being Hidden from the Public
Why have PAS stopped saying at bottom of their records (like here) the method of discovery and kind of land use it came from? What are they hiding by preventing the public from knowing that when they used to proudly display it ("83 % of our finds come from metal detectorists searching ploughland, woodland and pasture...")? Is it because they now have very few members of the general public toddling along to their "finds days" bringing artefacts for identification with them? The statistic (for example) that it's now more like 97% of the finds they record come from metal detectorists suggests to the public (who pay for it) that the public-funded Scheme is set up to service a minority hobby. Imagine what would be the reaction if there was a public-funded scheme that spent millions of pounds over 25+ years to digitise and make available the records from notebooks of a few thousand train spotters of England and Wales and present it as "citizen transport circulation analysts"
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