Outreach on Archaeological Looting: UK Style

What?

Colchester Museums @ColMuseums · 22 g.
Hands up who else has been binge-watching The Detectorists?

Most people, Colchester Museums, need watch it only once to see what damage 'cuddlifying' and encouraging uncontrolled and unmitigated intensification of collection-driven exploitation of archaeological record does to sites and assemblages up and down the UK. I expected more from them. Archaeology in Colchester and Essex Museums used to be of a very high quality relative to the country as a whole, mind you that was under Rex Hull, half a century ago. 

One might ask the Museum: Have they even got an FLO now to record artefacts ripped out of context by metal detectorists? I see not, instead they have something called "Essex Treasure Finds". So is looting sites for more items that just disappear into private collections something that Museum should be celebrating? Or in the view of the staff of the museum, is it really all about TREASURE HUNTING?

The Essex FLO post was once held by an individual who thought it was a perfectly balanced thing to do to lodge a police complaint that somebody had written on a blog some comments about her "finds days", now the PAS webpage under 'contacts' says:

The Essex FLO post is currently vacant. Please hold onto non-Treasure finds until the new FLO is in post and contact the post manager Philip Wise for any Treasure finds.

Hold on to them, and their documentation, or take them to another FLO for recording they mean. With lax approaches like that, it is not even a little bit surprising that on the watch of the PAS, latest figures suggest that some 93% percent of artefact hunted objects hoiked out of the archaeological record in UK as a whole have disappeared with neither trace nor record. Probably in Essex the figure is closer to 100% while there is no FLO and finders are too lazy to take them elsewhere. 

In fact, when you check, Disturbingly, seven objects from Essex (all loose coins) have been entered on the PAS database since mid October 2022 [by FLOs in SUR (4) and SF (3)]. Tragedy. It may be estimated that there are probably some 1200+ detectorists in Essex. Applying the HAAEC figures to this means that annually they are hoiking some 37,400 (37,396) artefacts [an average of 3,116 a month which would mean that 9350+* objects were hoikedin the three month perid from Mid October to now].

* plus, because most detecting goes on in the days with milder weather in the winter.