"Leading British Archaeologist and Their Outreach: "There's No Serious Archaeology Until You Get Two Feet Down".

    "Not two feet down, so OK": Leading British Archaeologist     

In addition to the comment I discussed just below this, in yet another comment to my post '"Metal Detector Use"', the sock-puppet metal detectorist blog-troller going by the assumed name of "De. (sic) William Shephard" decides this is somehow an appropriate response:

Paul the Troll, my dear chap, I have a couple of questions, are you really based in Poland, or, are the stories I am hearing that seem to cast a little doubt upon this claim correct? Secondly, regarding "strata damage", I have recently conversed with a leading Archaeologist, very much your senior, [No mames no, etc.,] who assured me that serious archeology [sic] is only concerned with what is beneath the initial two feet of soil, hence the use of bulldozers, are you in agreement with this pronouncement, or are you in opposition? Bearing in mind that I have the fellow's name and details...

Good grief. Where do we start? firstly, I do not see why whether or not the ad personam "stories are true" about where I live and with whom I live have any relevance at all to the content of this blog. If I lived under a bridge in Wensleydale, that would not change the importance of the questions I ask about metal detecting and the antiquities market. Note he seems to imply that he's in contact with people who claim to know about my private like - a stalker? I would not put that past the direputable crowd that the UK metal detecting community incorporates.

The second argument is what interests (I use the term loosely) me. Note what they both have in common though. Both fail to cite a source. Some unspecified "stories I am hearing" [from somebody I'm not going to reveal] are comparable to "I have recently conversed with a leading Archaeologist [...] No mames no,etc., who assured me...". What?

Well, "Bearing in mind that I have the fellow's name and details...", I'd like to know that. If they've got time to talk to a detectorist about this, I'd be willing to give them a listen, too. Can "De. (sic) William Shephard" put us in touch?

Just so things are clear. I do not think I have ever used the term "strata damage" here. Shephard's got me confused with somebody else. Anyhow:

a leading Archaeologist [...] assured me that serious archeology [sic] is only concerned with what is beneath the initial two feet of soil, hence the use of bulldozers, are you in agreement with this pronouncement, or are you in opposition?

In opposition, seniority or not. This is just wrong - I'm guessing said "Unnamed Leading Archaeologist" (ULA) was misquoted. Serious archaeology is interested in usable archaeological evidence wherever it is found in usable form. But to find it you have to look. 

- I once worked on a Cotswolds Roman rural site where the entire fifth century AD phase was revealed in the material from the topsoil (which we stripped by hand, no bulldozers). If ULA had used their bulldozer on that site, they'd not only have removed the latest phase, but most of the shallow archaeology, the ploughsoil was less than 0.25m deep. The plotting of the material in that ploughsoil revealed activity areas that were ploughed-out, but still detectable and recordable. 

- At Cottham, the VASLE project revealed patters of artefacts in the ploughsoil that related to discrete phases of activity (among others: here, here, here and refs). 

- Another classic examle that ULA should have heard of is the metal detecting surveys at Rendlesham base the interpretation of the site on the evidence from the ploughsoil (which has been damaged by metal detectorists intent on just collecting stuff for themselves). 

- Metal detectors are used to plot material in the ploughsoil to produce material for interpretation at many a battlefield site (Bosworth, Grunwald here in Poland, Little Big Horn in America). I cannot believe that an ULA determined to "assure" a metal detectorist would not be aware of this type of work and many more. At every one of these sites, bulldozing off the topsoil to get at the "serious archaeology" two feet below (sic) would simply destroy that evidence - and indeed the site. 

- Methodological surface surveys are the staple of many of the research projects foreign schools in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. Has ULA worked abroad ever?

- I have published an article on the situation in North Africa where the collecting of artefacts from surface scatters in the desert to serve the collectors' market has totally stripped away whole sites (2020: Green Saharas, Grey Markets: Commercial Exploitation of North African Prehistory, an Overview) this is not just "somebody else's problem", surface lithic assemblages in Breckland, and on the Moors in the North of England are also being distorted (damaged) by the activities of collectors - whether or not British archaeologists want openly to talk about it. ULA might like to comment.

- In a paper I'm writing at the moment, I am addressing the damage done to sites of twentieth century conflict by metal detectorists in Poland. Most of these sites are in the forest (so tekkies don't bother to get a permit) and most of the recovered stuff comes from just under the leafmould. That does not mean that no damage is done. On the contrary. That's where the unburied fallen (or rather their body parts with shreds of uniform and all the buttons and fittings) are found and robbed.

No, Shephard's ULA has got this completely wrong (leaving aside the issue that archaeology is NOT about digging up artefacts but their context - like the body parts just below the surface in the case I mentioned. So, yes, "senior" or "leading" he may be to Shephard, but I think ULA is wrong when making such broad and superficial generalisations to a metal detectorist ill equipped to understand them. Can we get British archaeologists to take a little more responsibility for the way they communicate with the public? 

Who WAS this archaeologist? Was it a real archaeologist or an imaginary one?