"Detectorists" at Christmas

             Detectorists,
             Random trampling of
            important site, pulling
               out loose unplotted finds

Thanks to some computer jiggery-pokery from my friends at Heritage Action (thanks), I managed to watch the eagerly-anticipated Christmas Special last episode of the TV series "Detectorists". A lot of tekkies were very pleased about the re-appearance of this light-hearted romp. I was disappointed. This new episode tried to reproduces the same themes as the previous series, but in my mind failed in several respects. They tried too hard to simply follow the same themes as before as if the intervening few (five?) years had not happened. The passing of time had taken its toll not only on some of the locations (village hall and the cottage) but several of the actors were looking a bit rough and their present appearance did not fit the roles they were forced to maintain in the new episode. Merely throwing in the odd hedgehog and shiny bug pictures and shots of sunlit fields and trees did not really patch things up. Moreover the main plot line is getting hackneyed, weird supernatural sounds, fade into LARP renactments of a battle scene, and then the Last Supper and the Holy Grail (sic) that the hapless duo narrowly miss finding. This has all been done before.

What we see in this episode more clearly in the others is the shady side of detecting. The writers have perhaps been on a couple of forums. There is also a change in the ethos of the "male bonding" that permeates and indeed shapes the first two series. In this episode, the two find an important Anglo-Saxon battlefield site ("ten acres of prime paydirt") and there is a conflict over reporting it. Lance, the runty little guy, wants to hoik out all the artefacts they can find before reporting it to the authorities (21:20 minutes). His detecting buddy (the weasel-like Andy - who'd at some stage trained as an archaeologist before returning to collecting) wants to get the archaeologists - with him at their lead - involved from the beginning. Lance finds gold which on the spur of the moment he hides from Andy. Then he realises that he'll have to report it and Andy will find out he lied, so he then decides to rebury it and pretend to find it again with Andy. But when he does that, he cannot relocate it and other detectorists find it...

Here we see the gap between what detectorists and their supporters say they do do, and what they  actually do. Remember this programme has arguably done a lot to increase the numbers of people going out in the fields with metal detectors, it shows these newbies "how to do it". What we see (20:51 minutes) is that having located an important site with material deposited in a specific pattern (they talk about where they found items in the field and with what 23:49 too) they are sitting under a tree pulling loose items out of a pouch, no individual bags or labels linking individual items with a particular findspot... and there is no GPS visible in their equipment. If Lance had located the findspot and reburial of the gold plate with a GPS, he'd not have the problem he did in relocating it for his friendship-saving stunt. This element of best practice is totally missing from this film.

Also pay attention to how the landowner is treated in the opening scene (00:47- 2:24). They meet on site, urge him to sign a search-and-keep agreement without reading it, fail to define what 'valuable' means (in terms of a 50:50 split). More importantly there is no suggestion that they will meet with the landowner before they leave the property to show what they are taking, let alone getting the landowner to sign off on any documentation that would legitimise these items passing into the finder's hands (as recommended long ago by the Nighthawking Report). When Lance finds gold, instead of reporting it to the landowner (who is the owner, and in the light of the agreement he haplessly signed, still owner of half its value), the finder walks off with the whole lot without even a by-your-leave. Agreement or no agreement, that actually is theft.  Also the nonsense about Andy "having 14 days" to report a copper alloy pommel (19:12) is complete bollocks, the scriptwriters should consult the law if they don't actually know it. The newbie and general public therefore would get from this film no idea of the best practice of establishing the legal situation of archaeological artefacts dug up from private land.

Another aspect that comes out clearly is the fate of the artefacts recovered from archaeological deposits by artefact hunters. The couple find a cup that they at first dismiss, but later realise might have been important, but by this time they have no idea where it is. (1:02:53-1:07:30).

But apart from the objects, what about the archaeology? Lance sees himself and his detecting fellows as "the team" that will "reveal the history" of the important battlefield site... but quite clearly thee is no detailed plotting of finds going on. Indeed the script goes off in the direction of a storied artefact (below) rather than adding any detail on what emerged from a metal detector survey of the battlefield (as a rally). Probably nothing, as the search is shown as being totally unmethodical. 

More to the point, we see Lance digging a pitifully small post-rally trench (aren't they all when metal detector finds are involved?) to investigate the site where the reliquary was found. Yet the irony is that what he is investigating is what is said to be the original findspot - but in fact it is a false findspot as Lance reburied the find in the dark. How many reported findspots in the PAS are equally false?  

On an archaeological note, the reliquary shown is completely bonkers. A gold plaque inscribed in Anglo-Saxon GREGORIUS MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN - a rehash of the inscription on the 9th century Alfred Jewel was part of a ('Byzantine'?) reliquary of early 13th century form that incorporates plaques apparently of Limoges enamel (13th century) but apparently lost in a fictional battle that took place in 599 between Ethelbert of Kent and Redwald of East Anglia. Just bonkers. Why, in a country having a Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is mentioned by name prominently IN the film, was opportunity not taken to USE the Scheme and its database (and outreach staff) to produce something more realistic, but instead ignore the archaeological evidence to produce this? Also, where in the iconography of the reliquary is any reference to the Last Supper or "Holy Grail"? So why does the idea that instead of a corporeal relic of a saint  (which most Limoges reliquaries contained), this one had contained the cup of the Last Supper come from? The museum archaeologist is depicted as simply story-telling rather than making a reasoned inference from actual evidence (but apparently the film's scriptwriters see UK archaeologists as doing precisely this).

The best the UK's BBC could do? 

Given the subject of the backstory, I find it incomprehensible why the writers included in this film at the beginning of a rally with a multiethnic makeup a scene of one of the participants delivering "the Blessing" (a tasteless parody mocking the Lord's Prayer) in a Christmas Special (39:00-39:38). This is offensive. It is absolutely out of place, except to show what a lot of godless and disrespectful oafs metal detectorists in the UK are. 

Update 28.12.2022

Re the last point (it's too much to expect we'd get any comment from the UK's detectorist-supporting archies on the archaeological issues raised here), I am lectured on social media by Eva McIntyre ("author, Actor, Storyteller, Anglican Priest") that the mock-blessing parodying the Lord's Prayer is offensive "only for the thin skinned". Yes, perhaps there are some, do they somehow not count as "real Christians" in her reckoning, therefore with no rights? One wonders what her sermons were like as vicar of Stourport on Severn and Wilden in the diocese of Worcester, maybe with jokes for the thick-skinned about lepers, the Flagellation followed by a standup routine parodying the Sermon on the Mount. That'd perhaps have had her congregation rolling in the aisles. I stand by my view that this was offensive.