Barford in "Metal Detecting and Archaeology"

.
I have been going on for more years than I care to remember about artefact hunting and suchlike and archaeology, so it was perhaps no surprise to see myself mentioned in passing (though not named) in Suzie Thomas and Peter Stone's book, "Metal Detecting and Archaeology". Being a book scribbler, the first pages got a few "this is a bit to note" (and a "wish I'd said that") marks in the margins, but page six attracted the first expletive. There Thomas is discussing the "antagonism" some people adopted on an archaeological forum to the notion of organizing a conference "Buried Treasure: Building Bridges" about how jolly super spiffing for the archaeological record artefact hunting with metal detectors is.

It was regrettable [...] that not only did none of the antagonists attend the conference [surely an ideal forum in which to debate their viewpoints?] but when three of the more strongly opinionated online discussants were approached to produce contributions for this book, all three declined to participate. Reasons ranged from not feeling they were sufficiently informed (!) on the subject to provide a reasonable chapter, through to disagreeing with the entire premise of the book. These individuals are of course entitled both to their opinion and to their choice not to contribute to the discussion, but it is nonetheless frustrating that people with such obviously strong opinions on the issue of archaeology and metal detecting were not prepared to lend that opinion to the debate being constructed here, leaving it up to this introduction to alert the reader to their - very strongly held- views.

Wow. What slimy people, eh?

Thomas is careful not to name names, but I am going to reveal that they are Chris Cumberpatch, Nigel Swift and myself. I believe I am the one who is represented as "disagreeing with the entire premise of the book" (and mine is the second unsourced quote given on the previous page, the one that calls the conference "fluff"). With regard to the other reason given, I do not see the reason for astonishment that a correspondent might have strong views but did not want to write without first delving deeply among the facts and figures to present a case in the face of what (from the conspectus all three of us received) was clearly indeed a "constructed debate" in favour of bridge building ("partnership"). Nigel and I thought hard about it, but decided that to do the task properly would require more than the dozen or so pages which the editor was prepared to assign to the task, and without seeing what others were writing/had written. This was when we decided to write our own book as an answer to Thomas and Stone. It came out longer than hers and gathering the facts and figures took several months hard work.

As for questioners of current British policies on artefact hunting not going to her conference full of metal detectorists from all over the north of England and on the topic of "Buried Treasure: Building Bridges"... read what was the keynote paper which opened it (Trevor Austin pp. 119-23) and ask yourself if debating conservation is going to make much headway in such an audience (that's where the rest of the scribbled expletives are in my copy). We were right that it was a waste of time, people who did make the journey told us afterwards that there was only very limited time for any discussion after the papers, so much then for "ideal venue for debate" on the topic.

There are more fundamental issues than "finding lottsa shiny stuff" ("Buried treasures") and "there's a good boy, thanks" head patting ("Building bridges") to be discussed here. A meeting chaired by fluffy bunny befrienders in a hall full of "get off our case!" metal detectorists "empowered" by the PAS partnership and egged on by the likes of Trevor Austin is clearly not the place where that kind of debate is going to be fruitful. In fact if one of us had turned up to debate the case openly, they'd probably end up being accused of "disrupting the conference" with their "negative views". This is so often the reaction met among these people to those who ask more searching questions than their glib justifications will withstand.
.

New book on metal detecting published

A new book on metal detecting in the UK and elsewhere edited by Suzie Thomas and Peter Stone has just appeared. Well done to all concerned. Nice cover. The publisher's website say it costs fifty quid, but at least one on-line bookshop thinks it is worth much more. I have not seen it yet but am more or less conversant with what was planned to go into the book, and think it should be read by anyone interested in the portable antiquities debate. Despite ten years of "liaison" with artefact hunters and collectors in Britain, as far as I am aware there is not much in the way of book-length academic treatments of the subject on the market at the moment, so any account is bound to be valuable for students as well as the general heritage-keen reader.

Having said that, I am co-author (with Nigel Swift) of the less conventional 'alternative' view (due out soon from the same publisher which is nice - maybe our cover should have had the BACK end of the lion on it...), so I'd say to get a rounder view of the problems, it would be useful to buy both when the second one (which is just about the UK) comes out.

Who should own Gandhi's glasses - and why?

Dr A. Srivathsan has an interesting article in the Hindu ("Who owns antiquity?" 15th March) which draws on the recent story of the sale of Gandhi memorabilia (relics?) to discuss some wider issues:

The world of antiquities is a murky and complex one where ownership is a contested space. Many Indian sculptures (and pieces of architecture) of immense historical value are still languishing in Western museums. In this context, it was naïve to expect Gandhi’s memorabilia to be returned voluntarily. [...] In the hypocritical, complex world of antiquities, the question who rightfully owns the object is never taken seriously, leave alone answered properly.

Worth a read and a think. In connection with this latest sale it is interesting to see collectors once again adopting a holier-than-thou stance with whole nations and their governments, Pierre Berge declares he will halt the selling of the items he's flogging off (an infamous rat and rabbit) if China will "free Tibet", the Gandhi seller wanted to make a deal to force the Indian government to spend more on health care. This seems to be analogous to the dealers' lobby declaring that they are striking a blow for "free enterprise" in the "source countries" with their "restrictive antiquities preservation legislation" by buying goods no-questions-asked and suggesting that the way to "stop the looting" is to drop the restrictive laws that make it illegal. Yeah right.

Codename: Ainsbrook A Time Team Special

The British TV show “Time Team” aims to present in a fly-on-the-wall quasi-reality-show format the process of archaeological investigation to the wider public. Though its a little cringeworthy in places, I think its generally a very positive thing as a palatable way of propagating knowledge about archaeology. In UK metal detecting forums one or two passing remarks made on air by certain people connected with this programme have become infamous - part of 'being-a-detectorist' lore. In general the programme has tried to stay away from the controversy on portable antiquity collecting in the UK. Perhaps this is with a view to viewer figures, perhaps it is just part of a general wimpyness among British archaeologist afraid to call a spade a spade here.

In a rare exception to this general tendency, presenter Tony Robinson (the only non-archaeologist in the TT 'inner circle') has some outspoken views of his own:

'Metal detecting worries me greatly,' he says. 'To be honest, I think we're [messing] about. The reality, according to Phil [Harding – PMB], is that there are likely to be no metal finds at all in the first foot of Britain's soil within 20 years. The only way we can prevent that happening is by legislation. I think all metal detectors should be licensed and to get a licence they should be required to abide by a code of archaeological best practice.'
'Everything we find, wherever it is, should be scrupulously and
systematically recorded within its archaeological context,' Tony insists. He says that the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which involves the voluntary recording of archaeological finds, is 'great, and I support the people who do it, but in a way it's a policy of despair because it's saying yes, all these people are going to plunder our archaeology but what we'll do is try to persuade the nice ones to tell us where they found it.' […]
Tony doesn't think legislation on metal detecting is too much to ask. It's about developing a critical mass of support to change hearts and minds on the issue. We don't allow people to collect birds' eggs any more, for example, he says. 'Yet this is worse than egg collecting. There will still be kestrels producing eggs until we get down to the last half dozen kestrels but once you lose archaeological remains they are gone forever.'

It is difficult to argue with any of that. Which, I guess, is why pro-collecting archaeologists in the UK tend to ignore points like this.

I do not think Phil Harding [one of the programme's archaeologists] was right in his assessment that all of the British archaeological record will have been "metal detected" away in two more decades, but it certainly will be more severely damaged than it is today by ineffective British policies on the issue. Part of the problem is that we really know nothing about the rate at which the unrecorded damage is occurring - Time Team for example estimates the number of "metal detectorists' in the UK as "50000". My own work suggests this figure is actually five times too high... This highlights the fact that we really do not know how many of these people there are, or what they are doing. It is high time we did. If there really are 50 000 of them, then the PAS is seeing only a very small proportion of the finds they are taking away (its bad enough if there are 10000).

Time Team usually shares the British media's general pat-on-the-head tendency to depict metal detector users as benign anorakish “history-seekers” only too willing to help archaeologists search sites for metal objects during for example Time Team projects (the official picture promoted by the pro-collecting archaeologists). In a rare exception to this, in January last year a Time Team programme "Codename Ainsbrook" was broadcast which atypically depicted the other side of the problem. It talked about the collecting that lies behind what is domesticated by the effete label "metal detecting". It discussed the archaeological investigation of a site (a single 'productive' site in the north of England), which had been searched by artefact hunters Mark Ainsley and Geoffrey Bambrook for a number of years before it was brought to archaeological attention. In this time they had removed "as many as seven or eight thousand objects" from the site. They were depicted none too kindly - for example as quarelling with the Treasure Valuation Committee about how much reward they "should" get for three silver coins which were declared Treasure.

The programme caused a great deal of discussion on the archaeology and metal detecting forums because it did not give a very flattering picture of the milieu in general. It was on British television again recently and the discussion has revived (see David Gill’s Looting Matters post). Let us see more of this sort of coverage of the artefact collecting issue.

I was interested in a comment added to David Gill's post. One of the Ainsbrook metal detectorists informed us that since the programme was broadcast: "from 2008 and the showing of the program the site is now being ‘nighthawked’ so finds from the site are not being recorded". I wonder whether this figures in the Oxford Archaeology "Nighthawking Survey" which is due out any moment now? It has been leaked is going to proclaim that British policies (and the PAS in partricular) have led to a decline in the illegal use of metal detectors on archaeological sites. We will see the basis for such remarks in due course.

UPDATE 26 Sept 2012: Time Team Special 34 (2008) - Codename Ainsbrook At the moment this episode is available on You Tube.

posted by Fillask·

Archaeology with balls

Over on the left of this blog is a little map widget which shows where people are reading this stuff, and gives (limited) information on what they read. I notice that this week there’s quite a few from France (bonjour) and one person did a search for HAPPAH – and I realize he did not find any post on the topic. So here is one.

This is a wonderful group of people doing what British archaeologists used to do before they lost their will to try and protect the archaeological heritage from this sort of erosion, and have now become “partners” (sic) with the artefact hunters. British archaeology once had a STOP (Stop Taking Our Past) campaign before they “dropped the ball”. The French organization has taken it up and running with it. Good for them. I wonder how many British archaeologists are even aware they exist? I wonder how many of them, if they knew, would support them?

Milken the Past

The Milken Institute has published a report Financial Innovations for Developing Archaeological Discovery and Conservation (December 2008)which so far has aroused some interest in the world of portable antiquities collecting (outside the UK) but little in archaeology (but see David Gill's discussion here and here). Basically one of the main theses is that rescue excavation could be financed by selling off (part of) the excavation archives (finds) to collectors. We’ve heard that before… Sometimes I wonder why it is that archaeologists are so lax about getting over to people what it is they do, and why and what an excavation produces and what is done with these data.

I was interested in the (all too brief and typically superficial) presentation of the UK’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (page 9). They say “

The scheme has also been criticized by some scholars as legalizing looting, promoting the removal of artifacts by amateurs. Proponents of the plan counter that the looting was happening already and that the scheme encourages those who have looted to at least document what was taken and from where, preserving minimal cultural context.”

Hey guys, talking about this “looting that was happening already”, you are talking about the PAS new partners, the shed-owning metal detector wielding portable antiquity hunters of Great Britain. You can’t call them “looters”, its not politically correct, you know.

The New PAS-Collecting Partnership

In most countries of the civilised world, the exploitation of the archaeological record as a source of collectables for entertainment and commerce is regarded as damaging to the longterm survival of the resource and historic environment.

In the topsy-turvy land of Britain, this is not so. There, it is almost as if the core beliefs of the ACCG had been enshrined in national policy. The nation’s biggest archaeological outreach organization, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, has long been dominated buy its close engagement with metal detector using artefact hunters and collectors. It has now been urged by the Clark Review to ditch the archaeological policy component of its advisory body (p. 30) which must now be seen as balancing the “interests of finders” with those of archaeology and curation. The objectives and aims of the NuPAS should reflect even more strongly that it is a “partnership with finders” (pp 6, 26-7, 28, 38) and PAS staff should maintain an “independence” from archaeological concerns about artefact hunting (p. 31). It seems the new way forward for the NuPAS is to enter into a “partnership with finders” and taking their “interests” into account. No sooner have the scandalous pro-metal detecting proposals of this review been made public, than we find the PAS is already busily pursuing these aims.

In his excited article “The Portable Antiquities Scheme Saved! Thanks to UK Detector Net”, in the 16th number of the detectorists’s newsletter “UKDN Word”, Roger Bland announces a number of moves intended to strengthen this partnership and deliver artefact hunters and collectors a better service (p. 22, sic). Among them is a bid for funding from English Heritage's National Capacity Building Programme in which his organization is in partnership with the metal detecting internet forum (sic) UK DETECTOR NET. They are seeking money to enable a feed from the PAS database to go to the UKDN website and also to help UKDN produce its newsletter (!). This is reputedly to “make the database more visible to UKDN users”. This cash handout to metal detectorists from English Heritage funds looks awfully like a thank you for the use to which that forum had been put in the recent public campaign. This is not the only metal detecting forum in Britain, it will be interesting to see whether PAS will be attempting to arrange cash handouts for them all. Here once again we see the same old emphasis on the “wottalotta finds” database rather than the archaeological outreach influencing attitudes to this type of exploitation of the archaeological resource this organization should be doing.

Another grant has been applied for “to pay for potential volunteers to attend residential summer schools to be trained in how to record finds on the PAS database”, this is in accordance with the recommendations of the Clark Review. We can no doubt expect another jump in “numbers of objects recorded on our database” as a result, though cutting out the FLO means that opportunities for archaeological outreach are thereby reduced. We recall that the Clark Review (p. 28 points out “outreach can be done by others”.

The PAS has reportedly also applied for outside money “to buy 200 hand-held GPS machines to give to every detecting club in the country and to community archaeology groups”. So the PAS is now giving the artefact hunters electronic equipment to help these artefact hunters to more quickly empty selected elements of archaeological sites into their personal collections without having to fumble with large scale maps. These handheld GPS are of course a double-bladed weapon. Meteorite hunters use them to find on the ground a point corresponding to the published co-ordinates of a fall or find, and they can then start exploiting them as a source of collectables. I am sure some club members will find this a useful aid in the wide-open fields of some areas of Britain to locating specific spots identified from old archaeological publications. Once again, this is clearly a PAS move to try and improve annual report statistics while cutting out the outreach and input by their own staff. Perhaps we will hear soon that in order to facilitate adding more and more appropriated collectables from archaeological assemblages added to this explosively growing "virtual collection", these new artefact hunting “partners” of British archaeology will be able to claim petrol money for going to commercial artefact hunting rallies – and maybe have the price of the entry ticket refunded from EH funds. Where will this all end?

Apparently the Council for British Archaeology is also a partner in this 'GPS for metal detecting clubs' bid. The CBA has recently appointed pro-collecting archaeologist Suzie Thomas as their 'Community Archaeology Support Officer', so it seems in what direction they are going on this issue too. When is portable antiquity collecting "archaeology for all” and when is it not? That’s the question to which I would like to hear a detailed and unassailable answer from both the CBA and the PAS. I am not holding my breath though.

We all know that a partnership means two entities working together towards a common aim. We know what the aim of the artefact hunter is, to locate and empty archaeological assemblages of selected pieces of archaeological evidence (ignoring and even discarding the rest) and add them to their scattered and ephemeral personal collections. British archaeology, and the PAS in particular, by calling its relationship with artefact hunting and collecting of portable antiquities, is therefore voluntarily party to this approach to the "management" (sic) of the British archaeological resource. The excuse given is that by gathering data about large number of ex-situ decontextualised artefacts they are in some way facilitating archaeological research. But if one looks at what the PAS produces as exemplars of that research we see narrow antiquitist (artefactological) studies of individual varieties or types of (metal) artefact, ethnic overinterpretation of emblemic artefact types and dot distribution maps. This is the type of research that would have been all too familiar to Gustav Kossinna and other investigators of the past with an intellectual foot in the scholarly world of the nineteenth century. Archaeology tried to leave Kossinnism behind decades ago, British archaeology is being dragged back to it by their current fascination with metal detected "data".

It seems to me that in entering a partnership with exploiters of the archaeological record for collectables will need some far-reaching rewrites of the codes of ethics of British archaeologists – fuzzy as they are on this issue at the moment. In fact, what kind of approach to archaeological ethics does this move represent? If to "create knowledge about the past" it is enough for any Tom Dick and Mohammed just to take a metal detector out into the countryside and hoik stuff up willy-nilly, then what on earth do archaeologists have codes of professional conduct and ethics for in the first place?
.

The New PAS and Artefact Collection Best Practice in England and Wales : NuPAS 7

The 2008 PAS Review has created a whole new set of objectives for the Scheme. Some of them reflect that the new Scheme that its author proposes creating is no longer envisaged primarily as a means of providing archaeological outreach to the accidental finders of artefacts. It now seems likely to be even more concentrated than before on collaborating (in a “partnership”) with those who exploit the archaeological record as a source of collectables for entertainment and profit.

The old Portable Antiquities Scheme was always very wary of discussing with “metal detectorists” the archaeological approach to using metal detectors and digging tools in certain sensitive situations, such as artefact-producing areas which are permanent pasture or earthwork sites, or emptying archaeological sites already known in the literature of archaeological finds. The PAS was caught between the feelings of some archaeologist who expected them above all (as part of their outreach on behalf of the discipline) to impart such ethical guidelines to artefact hunters and the artefact hunters themselves who wanted to be left to get on with emptying the archaeological record into their scattered ephemeral collections with the minimum of interference. As Clark (p. 28) puts it “Detectorists simply want FLOs to be ‘independent’ – in other words to not be antagonistic towards the hobby”. Independent that is of the rest of archaeological thought on such matters. The PAS has spent the last ten years not only not being antagonistic towards massive artefact hunting and portable antiquity collecting, but promoting the official line presenting it as in the public interest, and those that engage in it as “the unsung heroes of the UK's heritage". In fact it would appear that not everybody (in the PAS?) feels that this outreach needs to be done at all. One of the [unsourced] opinions Clark quotes (p. 28) is that “recording should remain a priority for the scheme as outreach can be done by others”. That is simply nonsensical – the ability of the PAS to do outreach about the archaeological aspects of finding portable antiquities was the prime motivation for funding the PAS in the first place. Where is this all leading?

How much Illegal Metal Detecting in the UK?

In the MLA’s “A Review of the Portable Antiquities Scheme” (Clark K 2008) we are told [oddly enough, in the “Recommendations” p. 6] that “it [the PAS] also seems to have reduced the amount of illicit detecting on archaeological sites”. This is important because the author suggests (p. 7) “closing the scheme” would be deleterious because “illicit detecting (and thus loss of sites) may increase”. It seems de rigeur these days to accept that the Portable Antiquities Scheme is the best thing since sliced bread for “stopping looting”. Certainly that’s what Derek Fincham asserts (though cites no source for this belief), and as we have seen Californian coin dealer and ACCG officer Dave Welsh too. Just repeating an idea does not make it true. Now. however, the MLA has produced a report which says the same. Let’s have a look more closely.

Clark’s definition of Illicit detecting can be found on page 18 of the report:

So-called ‘nighthawks’ use metal detectors on sites without the permission of the landowner.

That's it. Well, that is by no means an adequate or full definition of illicit artefact hunting even in England and Wales, not by a long chalk. But there is more:

“Not only can such activities damage archaeology, they damage the reputation of responsible metal detectorists by association”.

This is the typical British politically correct newspeak – we catch the Oxford Nighthawk Survey saying the same thing, its one of the typical metal detectorist whinges too. Clark even cites “The Searcher (metal detecting magazine)” to make the point.

Well actually the problem is more complex than that. Illicit artefact hunting (be it in England or Afghanistan) in fact not so much damages archaeology and the reputation of artefact hunters, but damages archaeology and the reputation of the antiquities market that thrives on it. The Brits are so wrapped up in their narrow insular preoccupation of being nice to artefact collectors that it seems they find it terribly difficult to see the wider context of the debate. All forms of clandestine and illegal artefact hunting are the real – and almost only – reason for the disapproval among archaeologists and other conservation-minded folk of the artefact trade and portable antiquity collecting.* I cannot see where British archaeologists have a problem seeing it in those terms and where such statements come from.

So how much illegal artefact hunting is going on in the UK? Well, since it is a clandestine act, the answer is that we really do not know. Ms Clark mentions on page 9 of her text the survey done by Dobinson & Denison (1995 - she gives the wrong year of publication in the text and totally misrepresents it as "a report on the illicit use of metal detectors"). She says they found that "...188 scheduled ancient monuments (SAMs) had been attacked in the [previous] five years and that 37 out of 50 archaeological units reported raids on excavation sites”. But on page 18 of her review she makes the following bald statement:

Initial results [of the Nighthawking Survey] suggest that the problem has decreased significantly since the last survey in 1995 – the amount of damage to monuments has been reduced by a half and 27% of units report problems. It is possible that a strong, local ‘responsible’ metal detecting community might act as a ‘watch dog’ and deterrent to illicit detecting.

This looks like pre-publication ‘leak’ of the preliminary Oxford Nighthawking Survey results (though the survey is not mentioned in the acknowledgements as having supplied such information). It would seem from this then, extrapolating from Ms Clark's 'leaked' summary of these results, that the Nighthawking Survey has been informed about illegal metal detecting on c. 94 scheduled ancient monuments in the whole of the UK, which would be the context of Clark's assertion that the number is “down by a half”.

The quoting of these figures in this context is laughable. First of all, Clark’s own definition of “nighthawking” from page 18 does not mention scheduled monuments, while that was the only category studied by Dobinson & Denison, and by inference this must be the yardstick to which she is referring. So how many archaeological sites which are not scheduled sites (like the field at Stixwould) are being looted by nocturnal trespassing thieves armed with metal detectors? In fact where are these reports expected to come from? How is a farmer with several thousand hectares to know his field was visited by nighthawks? If they don’t break down the fences or leave gates open and fill the holes in and there is rain between their visit and the time a farmer visits that particular area of his farm, there would be few traces (or none that could not be equally attributable to poachers, or other intruders).

Secondly Clark fails to stress that Dobinson and Denison's survey was restricted to England and Wales, while the Oxford Survey covers the entire UK, including the Channel Islands. The PAS only operates in a part of this area. If so-called nighthawking has decreased in the area as a whole, including those not covered by the Scheme, then the effect is not due to the Scheme. I really do think we need to see the actual results of the Oxford Survey before making any statements like the ones we find in this review and drawing hasty conclusions from them.

In particular I am disturbed by the apparent assumption by the Oxford survey that "responsible metal detectorists" will “shop” fellow metal detectorists by filling in their questionnaire. This is very naïve. UK metal detectorists stick together and rarely do this kind of thing - except out of spite. As we have seen, metal detectorists are fully aware who among them does this kind of thing, where and when it is going on. As Stixwould rally organizer Norman Smith said: “the problem is we all know who they are and do nowt about it". So much for the notion that if any drop in frequency of illegal activity is a real one, it is because "responsible detectorists are policing sites". Far from it, most responsible detectorists generally keep well clear of such folk, they have a reputation for being dangerous. Several of my contacts have been threatened by these less savoury elements just for expressing support for the PAS. I have heard reports of damage done to cars of responsible detectorists who have criticised the unethical behaviour of fellow detector users. It is pretty telling that even the archaeologists involved in the Oxford Survey have decided that they should preserve their anonymity for fear of reprisals.

An interim statement has appeared in the periodical British Archaeology (Anon 2008). One of the questions examined was whether “nighthawking” occurred across the whole country or whether it was concentrated in certain hotspots, preliminary results suggested it was most prevalent in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland (Anon 2008, 24). Oddly enough it is precisely in three of these counties that the first attempts were made to "liaise" with metal detectorists (Tony Gregory and colleagues in Norfolk and the Fenland regions in the 1970s). The interim statement makes no mention of any "reduction by half" of damage to sites in the UK generally. The looting that is currently going on affects both scheduled and unscheduled sites; Roman ones were particularly targetted (Roman artefacts find a wider international market than Anglo-Saxon, Medieval or prehistoric ones), and it was noted that raids were more frequent on sites near to motorways. More interesting, preliminary results suggest that “there is evidence of an efficient grapevine, whereby nighthawks are notified immediately after a suitable phase of cultivation, or just before legal archaeological or metal detecting surveys” (Anon 2008, 24). This of course goes against the general trend within artefact hunting as a whole to protect information about potential search sites from fellow artefact hunters and suggests the prospect that in Britain too (as certainly is the case in the Balkans and Crimea), to some extent illegal metal detector use and the sale of portable antiquities is in some way linked with organized crime.

The author of this interim report stress that the archaeological issues are about more than the common law theft of the objects, but the “unrecorded removal of archaeological material can irretrievably distort the archaeological ‘signature’ of a site, or even destroy it altogether. Artefacts retrieved (sic) in this way lose much or all of their potential to inform about the past, and may suffer substantial damage”. The authors note that people affected by this crime in the UK do not have confidence in the police, magistrates or the Crown Prosecution Service (to which I bet we could add "archaeologists") to take effective action. In general, illegal metal detector use is treated as a relatively low priority crime by police forces in most of the country (though both Kent and Wales police forces now have small units dedicated to fighting heritage crime). When successful prosecutions are made, the resulting sanctions are often no more than token cautions or small fines.

There could be many reasons why the Oxford Survey has no information of illegal metal detecting on all but 70 scheduled sites. It could be that so many scheduled sites were so badly denuded of anything collectable in the 1980s and 1990s that by 2007 their metal detecting was less profitable than it had been a decade earlier and the clandestine detectorists had moved on to other areas. Perhaps the metal detectorists are getting better at filling their holes in after digging. Maybe EH field monument wardens are not getting to as many sites as a decade ago (currently they visit each site on an average once every three years - so it is difficult to see how they could detect any nighthawking that was not leaving two-metre deep holes). Finally not all the sites are owned by farmer John Browning. The important point however is that this is not a problem that only affects scheduled sites are either undergoing nighthawking. To prevent nighthawks finding sites where collectables may be found, the findspot data in the entire PAS database is hidden from public view, not only that referring to scheduled sites.

The number of archaeological units reporting “nighthawk” activity is said to be lower than 1995, but then as far as I am aware, the number of units is far lower than it was nearly a decade and a half ago (Oxford Archaeology itself having become one of the expansive big units which as developed in recent years). Since, however, one of the main reasons why artefact hunters have been attacking archaeological excavations has been because the topsoil (contaminated with many modern non-collectable metal artefacts) has been removed – one wonders whether the Oxford Survey did muich outreach to building contactors to ask whether trespassing on building sites after earthmoving had also dropped in this period.

I think we are ill-served by the leaking of and drawing conclusions from the preliminary results of a complex and controversial joint project like this without the ability to assess the conclusions in the light of a presentation of the manner in which the data were gathered and their limitations. We are asked by the pro-collecting lobby to take too much on trust without any concrete and verifiable facts being presented to support the rosy picture they wish to paint. It may be that illegal artefact hunting has declined in Britain over the past decade, or it may be that there are many interests which have much to gain by pulling wool over everybody's eyes. Let us examine this new information in its wider context when the report appears.


*Clark goes on (p. 33) to note: PAS is also seen internationally as a pioneering way of dealing with the problem of illicit detecting. Banning detecting seems only to drive it ‘underground’ and to turn responsible detectorists with an interest in the past into criminals. Another typical “detectorist” whinge which I do not want to go into just now but is from the same stable. It is disappointing to see such things trotted out so glibly in a government sponsored report.

Anon 2008, Nighthawking’ British Archaeology Jan/Feb 2008.

Archaeologists and their Ivory towers

Over on the SAFE blog I gently chide my colleagues that few of them seem terribly excited about the demonstration that with the right pressure applied, even eBay can change its policies to do its corporate part to help protect an endangered resource. The world's archaeological record is being exploited and eroded to an increasing degree to produce an array of collectable "pieces of the past" for entertainment and profit. A lot - perhaps now even the majority - of them are sold through Internet portals like eBay. But the most many archaeologists will do about it is to get discouraged by the scale of the problem, the apparent size of the opposition, and try to ignore the problem. Perhaps archaeology needs to take a more active line and whip up public opinion to try and get eBay to clean up the enormous scale of the trade in the UK and US of totally undocumented archaeological artefacts (and yes, I include coins in that category). This obviously has an enormous potential to act as a cover for the movement of illicitly-obtained artefacts, and the dissemination of fakes as authentic items. I think if eBay starts attracting wider attention as a place where looted items and fake antiquities can be and probably are being laundered (with all that entails), then eBay will not be slow to react. Or are our 'professional' archaeologists going to continue to passively sit in their ivory towers while the foundations continue to be dug away from under them?

But then of course the British ones would run the risk of upsetting many of their mates the "metal detectorists" if they did something like that. That speaks volumes for the nature of the "bridge" they have built themselves with the world of portable antiquities collecting.

Discussing the International Antiquities Trade, the British Way

This is a follow up to an earlier post here about discussions or rather the attempted avoidance of discussions about collection of potable antiquities on the Council for British Archaeology’s discussion forum, Britarch .

Ten days on, Dave Welsh is still trying to persuade British archaeologists there of what is what. They are mostly ignoring both him and sidekick (antiquity collector from Canada) John Hooker, from time to time interjecting with carefully-worded brief comments or reproaches. Welsh is noticeably attempting to play to the gallery by singling out for criticism one participant in the debate over portable antiquities collecting and trade in every second of a long series of posts, usually preceded by words such as “extremist”. Emboldened by the fact that nobody objected, and one “metal detectorist” agreed to the use of the term, he has now issued them a direct challenge:

I would like to invite listreaders other than extremists such as Paul Barford, to present reasons why his remarks and those of similar extremists should be taken seriously.

These "remarks" of course refer to things like:
1) the international trade of portable antiquities,
2) the effects of wholesale unregulated digging on a near global scale of the archaeological record as a source of collectables for entertainment and profit,
3) the movement of illegally excavated and exported material (and the efforts of the pro-collecting lobby to justify ignoring such “bothersome” formalities as documenting the origin of the items which are traded in this lucrative and ambiguous market).

The conservation-minded reader can decide for themselves whether it is indeed “extremist” to express concern about and desire to see a change in the current situation.

Welsh has made the job of starting (or avoiding) such a discussion easier for them by issuing statements in the same challenge such as:

Arguments which in effect assert that site specific contextual information is all important frequently tend to conflict with modern views of the importance of learning from the past

and that such attitudes lead to disastrous results:

Perhaps the preventable (and in many cases horrible) deaths of many millions of people should receive at least some weight in current archaeological opinion.” (sic).

Well, let us see what the inherently portable antiquity collector-friendly British archaeological community on the CBA's discussion forum make of this. Will they stand up to the challenges of the portable antiquity dealer and argue in support the notion of the conservation of the archaeological resource in the face of widespread commercial exploitation for the collectables market? Or perhaps they will collapse in the face of the enthusiasm with which he expounds the collectors’ point-of-view that to question the status quo from conservation grounds is in some way not only "non politically correct " or "elitist" but actually "extremist" and refuse to be seen to be associated with such ideals? Will they settle for further “compromise” with commercial exploitation (on the grounds that artefact collecting of the type advocated by Mr Welsh is in some way really “archaeology for all”)? Or will they turn a deaf ear and pretend they did not hear the question and ignore him in discrete (or embarrassed) silence?

Watch this space.

A Question for British Archaeologists

British archaeologists are engaged in a process or "bridge-building" and compromise with all manner of artefact hunters and portable antiquity collectors. I'd like to address a question to those among them that support, advocate and actively pursue such policies, including the Council for British Archaeology and the Portable Antiquities Scheme:

"when is personal collecting of portable antiquities "archaeology for all" and when is it not?"

A straightfoward question; getting an answer to it from British archaeologists seems not so simple, I wonder why? They talk of compromise, but seem unwilling to disclose the limits to the degree to which they will compromise archaeological principles to avoid any form of confrontation with the artefact collecting lobby.

The Name of the Game: is "artefact hunter" an offensive label?

On the Council for British Archaeology's ‘britarch’ public discussion list is a recent post by a metal detector user from Sussex in which it is intimated that the term “artefact hunter” is an offensive label. Several other British archaeological forums have in the past agreed with this view and as a consequence in a bout of political correctness banned the use of the term. One of these forums was that of the Britain’s largest archaeological outreach, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (now closed) the other is the forum of BAJR (British Archaeological Jobs Resource). The British are apparently required to call these hobbyists “metal detectorists”. Over the other side of the Atlantic however relic hunters are not afraid to use the term, meteorite hunters use metal detectors and do not take umbrage if called meteorite hunters. So what’s the problem?
In Britain the hobby of looking for ancient artefacts with a metal detector from the 1970s onwards was initially called ‘treasure hunting’. This was the name given to Britain’s oldest hobby magazine. Such a name however suggested that the people with metal detectors were in it for the money, an image the hobby desperately wanted to play down once it was being highlighted by anti-collecting public information programmes (such as the CBA’s abortive STOP campaign).

The term “metal detecting” was suitably neutral, it sounded rather anorakish and harmless. As Andrew Gilchrist (2003) noted the name conjures up in the popular imagination a pastime which

“is hardly regarded as rivetting; a hobby, perhaps, for people who find trainspotting too full-on”.

The problem is that there are many things one can do with a metal detector other than hoover up ancient metal artefacts from the archaeological record for entertainment or profit. Most of us meet metal detectors in airport check-ins, the foyers of public buildings. Are the people who operate them and interpret the results “metal detectorists”? Metal detectors are used by builders (to locate electric cables and pipes in walls), they are used in industry (to detect foreign objects in food). Some people use their metal detectors to hunt for meteorites in the desert, or gold in the mountains and would never dream of searching an ancient site. Others search beaches and places where public events have recently been held in order to gather up loose change and other dropped valuables. Some take part in token-hunting competitions, while others search the scenes of recent military activity to find collectable hardware. Metal detectors have many uses, and they are all “metal detecting”. The term used by the British in order to be politically-correct is ambiguous and imprecise. So ambiguous and imprecise in fact that it is a hindrance rather than an aid to discussion. That, of course is the main reason why portable artefact collectors want it to be the term used in discussions, and why they start to get a bit worried when people start calling them "artefact hunters". They pretend it is "offensive" - but never have explained in what way, but it does make explicit what they and their supporters want to play down.

I am all for calling a spade a spade. In the hobby that is (should be) of archaeological concern in Britain, this equipment is being used to hunt for artefacts, the hobby these people are engaged in is artefact hunting. The portable antiquities that are collected in Britain include more than just metal objects found with a metal detector, but flint tools, pottery, the occasional shale, jet, amber, stone, bone or glass object also find their way to private collections. This is all a cause for concern, not just the part of the hunting for collectables which is electronically aided. Metal detecting is nothing more or less than artefact hunting. But as Jerome Hall noted in his seminal article, calling a spade a spade is not something the artefact hunting and collecting milieu is very good at.

References:
Andrew Gilchrist 2003: ‘There's gold in them there hills', The Guardian, Nov. 17

Jerome Hall 2007: 'The Fig and The Spade: Countering the deceptions of treasure hunters. AIA Archaeology Watch.
.