Heritage Watch Watches

                        An Edwardian castle?              

Hooray, hurrah, hwre:

Gwent Police | Rural Crime Team @GPRuralCrime · 9h
#RuralCrimeTeam investigating a report of illegal #MetalDetecting on a protected #ScheduledMonument in #Monmouthshire today #PartnershipWorking with @CadwWales we investigate all reports of #NightHawking activity on our #Historic sites

What does that actually in real (not fluffy-wuffy talk) mean? Go along look at the site, see/not see traces of overnight digging, and.... what? The offence has three components (a) entering private property, (b) digging holes in itm, and (c) making off with artefacts. What Britain needs for combatting (a) is a system like the one being introduced in Poland next year by a new law whereby through registering using their phones, active metal detectorists give the authorities their phone details, so they can be tracked using phone data and their presence on a particular field at a particular time can be documented. As for (c) it is an easyt matter to identify finds in a seized private collection that do not have any legitimising documentation, such as protocols signed by teh landowner assigning ownership to items from their land. Are Gwent police investigating that? Doubt it. Who can see a flaw in both of those measures? This reveals that a proper discussion of these issues is the only way we can stop faffing about and get a truly effective system in place to protect the archaeological record from looting by irresponsible and law-breaking actors.

Reference:
Paul Barford, 'An App, a Map, and a Reward: Promoting and Enabling Artefact Hunting in Poland', The European Archaeologist 78 (October 2023) (mirror here)