'Collection-Driven Exploitation"of the Archaeological Record': How do we Start Debate without Defining What it is About?

Protecting sites from deliberate damage is surely one of the things that archaeologists should be agreed on and striving for. Yet, sites are being looted the world over because of the quest for collectable portable antiquities. We need a term to cover all aspects of the relationship between artefact/relic collectors and the archaeological resource that all agree is threatened by its use merely to produce collectables. We surely need to take a transnational view of the phenomenon and not focus on single aspects and insular issues. There would be nothing controversial in talking about the phenomenon of the damage done by 'collection-driven exploitation of the geological record' by fossil hunters and mineral collectors, why can we not talk about 'Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record by relic hunters and coin collectors without emotions being aroused?

Sadly, in part of the English-speaking world (and the UK in particular), the discussion on these issues has tended to be dominated by the views that surround the operation of, and support for, the Portable Antiquities Scheme of England and Wales. This has gdrawn most of the discussion into a narrowed framework, based on the 'discovery' paradigm, rather than taking a conservation-based and more holistic view. It then focuses on seeing and depicting artefact hunting (only) as 'public engagement with the past' rather than a more nuanced view of the wider phenomenon. The pervasiveness of this PAS-legacy view is one of the reasons I started this blog, to attempt to show the other side of the stiry for those that might want to look again at the issues.

It seems the PAS does not really appreciate my efforts, and generally refuse to take part in any discussion that goes beyiond the edges of the box that they've built. Recently, having the occasion to discuss it with a member of the PAS 'outreach' staff, I challenged Durham FLO Ben Westwood, who vocally disagrees with me about the damage done by artefact hunting, instead of his relentless labelling everything I say on the topic 'lies', 'fake news' and 'click bait' (sic), to explain in the comments under one of my blog posts about why he is of another opinion. One would have thought that somebody employed to do public outreach would be able to explain why certain people in the PAS expound views about artefact hunting that go against what most archaeologists - taking a transnational view - would say on the subject (here for example, here too, and here, or here, also here, here, but many, many more). So far, the FLO has declined to actually comment sensibly, merely plays the victim:

I'm willing, as i've stated many times, to discuss my views and opinions. But i don't really think that's what you want. I'm reaching the conclusion that you're just not interested in the opinions of others unless they neatly align with your own. Which is rather strange. [...] Does it occur to you that other opinions may be equally valid and yet reach different conclusions to you? 'Collection-Driven Exploitation' is a great example: how do we start debate with such loaded language? (Your terminology, incidently, that i've never seen anybody else use)

I would say better than merely talking about what he would have to say if he had something to say would be to actually say it, and then we could all see what he, as a FLO, has to say on the subject, no?

But he sees a problem, by not using an anorakish proxy term like 'metal detecting' and being asked to name the spade that he's trying to avoid calling a spade by using the term I am promoting here to describe what this blog is about, that is it is about 'Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record', the ball is in a different court from the one where he and the PAS tekkie partners generally play about in. 

The problem is, isn't it (really) that the only way his 'opinions' would even remotely be 'equally valid and yet reach different conclusions to [me]' would if he's not deliberately using vague proxy terms for the activity we are discussing. 'Collection-Driven Exploitation' is only 'such loaded language' for those who are attempting to deny that the main reason artefact hunters hunt artefacts with metal detectors, magnets, dowsing rods or the naked eye - or whatever - is related to their collection. And I think there is a good reason why the supporters of artefact hunting and artefact hunters tend not to use the term I promote here. But the activity of concern is, it jolly well is, 'Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record', and it is that which I am discussing in this blog. Yes we are, and anyone who wants to run away from the discussion framed in such terms, I would say, is an intellectual coward.

'Metal detecting' is an obsolete conventional term that I show elsewhere applies to at least six other hobbies that are not 'Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record' (depending how you define the latter). Beach detecting is not a problem for me, looking for placer gold in stream beds also not, token hunts do no damage. Coin shooting on 1930s fairground sites in the USA is not what I am writing about here. Meteorite hunting damages something, but not the archaeological record. Hunting for metal debris from modern warfare (Nazi War Diggers type stuff or aircraft crash sites) is problematic, but does not fall into the same character as Roman villas and DMVs. Metal detectors are used in airports and public buildings, factories and elsewhere.

I would say the best (and in fact only) way to start a proper debate is to first agree on what it is we are discussing. I think we need to be discussing  'Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record'. The Ixelles Six and the PAS so far have run a mile from the suggestion. Why?

I would also say labelling a debate about collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record' as something else, using terms that may be partial, insular or vague, is in fact using loaded language intended to obscure, rather than highlight the real issues. 

Vignette: Mike Pegg and his heaped artefact collection, from one of my favourite metal detecting videos of all time.

Is Just 'Digging up Old Stuff' in any way an Advance in Archaeological Practice?

There are those in archaeology that are sucked up in the PAS gladtalking about those folk up to their neck in collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record are in some way engaging in something they call 'citizen archaeology'. They might like to explain to the rest of us that if you do a   search for specific terms in periodicals such as Advances in Archaeological Practice, while you get 38 hits for the word 'collection' (in collocation mostly with the word 'data'), and thirteen hits for the word 'detecting', you get just one for the phrase 'metal detecting' - but that (American) article does not refer to collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record but the use of a metal detector as a tool in a systematic archaeological survey.

It seems there is a whole body of post-nineteenth-century archaeological thought that considers the discipline of archaeology to be more, far more, than 'just digging up old things'. Back to school for the rest.

Advancing archaeological practice? Mike Pegg, Down To Earth -- metal detecting tips , published on You Tube 13th Dec 2006.

A Citizen's Guide to Museums (Courtesy British Museum)

Tuning in his grave,
Augustus Wollaston Franks

The days of scholarship at the British Museum seem definitively over. When asked to define a term used in one of their official publications, the best the Museum could offer was "the Museum would agree with the Oxford English Dictionary definition, that archaeology is ‘The study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artefacts and other physical remains’. Hmm. That rather looks like a definition of the discipline written by philologists than practising archaeologists. Anyhow, following that line of Bloomsbury Reasoning the British Museum would therefore presumably also agree with the Oxford English Dictionary definition of museum:

A building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited

That's it. The definitive definition of the modern museum and its functions, a roofed store and exhibit space. And here we have the crux of the problem, I have not been corresponding with scholars at all but a building, an inanimate construct of stones and mortar, glass and steel. How ridiculous it is of me to expect a sensible answer from a building.

Anyway, Grebkesh and Runn the antiquity dealers have a shop (building) in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, and cultural interest are stored and exhibited, lots of them. All reasonably priced, too. Grebkesh and Runn must therefore be by definition museum curators. As is the metal detectorist in his bungalow (building) with his collection of historical, scientific, artistic, and cultural interest stored and exhibited scattered unlabelled on shelves around the building (he has another building, a shed, containing more - two museums in one).

Citizen Museum Outreach officer Mike Pegg
in the museum's main exhibition space

Cutting edge modern museum display design

Watch Museum research officer Mike Pegg do his citizen outreach in his citizen museum:.

This is my favourite metal detecting video of all time (apart from this one).  

I discussed this video several years ago http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2008/07/informative-metal-detecting-video.html 

[Just for those dull-of-understanding artefact dealers who cannot tell which of the recent posts on the topic of citizen archaeology are very much tongue-in-cheek [Americans have difficulty with irony] this one most certainly is. It is poking fun at the unprofessionalism of an insular institution which cannot properly answer a simple and perfectly justifiable question about the terminology used in one of their official publications].

 

Google Launches 'Treasure Mode'

Google is engaged in a new crowd-sourcing project inviting millions of users to help in the hunt for buried treasure using a new "treasure mode" on its maps:

The company posted a video on YouTube explaining how Street View's "underwater team" discovered a chest containing lost maps during an expedition to the Indian Ocean. Dr. Marco Meniketti, an independent archaeologist, confirmed that this was Captain Kidd’s 315 year-old map. The video explains how hidden treasure symbols can be unearthed on the maps, which have been digitised by a special 3D nanoscanner. Google marketing manager Mike Pegg says: "The map is rumoured to contain the clues to Captain Kidd's long lost treasure, however the map contains encrypted symbols and codes and is not readily decipherable. "Therefore, we're introducing treasure mode on Google Maps and inviting the whole world to come together in the search for clues."

It seems everybody is looking for ancient buried Treasure these days.

More from the Wrexham "Heritage Society"

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I got an irate message from a metal detecting organization which calls itself a "heritage society" based in Wrexam so decided to take a look at their website again. They've revamped it, it no longer says on the front page that they are "supported by the PAS" which is a relief. I am sure that the PAS does not actively support the collecting away of the archaeological record for entertainment and sale.

Further on in, there is the usual apostrophe abuse ("Metal detectorist's" what, "Landowner's" what?) and on one of the inner pages we find they think its OK what they do, because they take their metal detecting seriously (sic) and "Every member has third party insurance and are also a member of the National Council for Metal Detecting and bound to its code of practice for responsible metal detectorists". Not the official one agreed with heritage bodies then - which the NCMD does not (despite earlier promises) require its members to apply to their "serious" artefact hunting.

There are some interesting videos on their website, one showing twenty members in a hall somewhere - note the military style drill with the shovel, maybe this old bloke fancies himself as one of the UK Minutemen? The group goes on about their preserving the things they find from environmental hazards, so note the very carefully controlled environment these fragile metal objects are displayed in. They do not seem to be labelled with findspot either, do they? Note the sorry apology for weekend entertainment - sitting in the corner of a field at a "fair" - is enlivened with a "PIRATE Treasure hunt" (at 1:26 mins). Some other videos posted by Steve Morris on the WHS website include the usual ones by Norfolk Wolf, the hand-waving Mr Brun explaining archaeological sampling techniques for the heritage society's members, and my favourite metal detecting video star, Mike Pegg (is he a WHS member?).

The inappropriately-apostrophied "members' photo gallery" page includes a very notable section: C.P.A.T. Gallery :

"This section of our Gallery has been created for our local Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust team to place artefacts of interest, and give you, the viewer a brief history of the items".

Eh? All very nice, but the archaeologist members of the WHS do not include a mention of a single FINDSPOT for any of the objects. Note the same gallery passes as the PAS gallery. This is just naked artefactology, not archaeology. So I don't know what the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust (presumably those who are reported as bad-mouthing me) are up to here. Apparently, if what the WHO member says is true, the Clwyd Powys archaeological mob can curry favours with the artefact hunters by attacking people who disagree with this manner of treating the archaeological record merely as a mine for collectables, but I bet they can't come on here and justify with archaeological arguments what they are doing to our faces. I dare you.

Scottish archaeologist - UK Artefact Hunting, "What's Missing?"

Scottish archaeologist David Connolly appeared at the Newcastle conference on building bridges between archaeology and artefact collecting. He has obligingly put his presentation "What's missing? Reality resources and reactions" online. This serves as a useful summary of what the problem is in the current "partnership" between British archaeologists and artefact hunters and collectors.

This is what he said before the conference he was going to do:

"Exploring the UK systems and preconceptions, this paper deals with the realities in the field and uses the author's previously gathered information along with statistical analysis that compares the two main processes of artefact collection – detecting and commercial archaeology. Drawing on a wealth of recent analysis and fieldwork, the purpose will be to reassess the directions taken, and argue for a focussed approach that acknowledges both the benefits and harsh realities when it comes to dealing with portable antiquities collection, sale and recording in the UK".

The talk fails to deliver the promise. There is a lot about what a wonderful "opportunity" (to get to see handfulls of loose archaeological artefacts) artefact hunting offers to the British object-oriented archaeologist, but the only "harsh reality" this speaker recognised is that there are "misconceptions on both sides" which stand in the way of full co-operation.

Archaeologist Connolly seems to regard the critics of current policies on collecting as his opponents. Here we have direct confirmation of the US dealers' lobby label of preservationists as "radical archaeologists". So David Connolly would have lots in common with Wayne Sayles, I wonder if they got together during the conference and swapped stories and jokes? Several times throughout the talk he refers to the theme of how bothersome it is that there are some critics of archaeologists entering into a site-damaging partnership with artefact collectors. He devoted the major part of the talk to attempting to show that "metal detecting" does relatively little damage to the British archaeological record. Now, I happen to be at the other end of Conolly's criticism, because have always maintained that (a) the damage is greater than most of the "fluffy bunny approach" mob will allow and (b) whatever the scale is, it is unacceptable and the British archaeological community should be taking steps to make this at least a form of damage to the UK archaeological record that is avoidable. Instead they are doing precisely the opposite in a quest to see more goodies out of the soil.

I will return to the specific "statistics" Connolly trundled out (to support his claim that the critics of the current status quo are wrong) in the post below this. Here I want to express my general thoughts on the whole talk. Dave really was thrashing about in the dark (slide 3) trying to find his niche as "Protector of the Collector". It was actually a bit nauseating, starting from the dedication to his mother onwards, really (first time I've heard that at an academic conference in several decades of going to them). Not unexpectedly there was lots of "fluffy bunny" we-are-all-good-mates padding (slides 16 and 17), but no real addressing of the problem how the archaeologist should be approaching the exploitation of the archaeological record as a source of collectables.

Connolly seems most concerned about "attitudes" to his mates the artefact hunters and collectors. He seems to present it as a plus that the critics of the current policies on artefact collecting are unable to say how many "metal detectorists" there are in the UK. I would say that after twelve years of a policy based on liaison, it is an extreme negative that the archaeological community of Great Britain still has no way of assessing how big the problem is (slides 2-3 " ...in truth we don't know"). That actually is very disturbing.

Connolly does his best to defend the "metal detectorist" from criticism. He plays down the degree of illegal activity carried out by metal detector wielders, he quotes figures that of the "10320 Roman sites alone" in Norfolk only 23 have been the victim of illegal artefact hunting and say that is acceptable. That's 23 where the activity has been spotted, and we recall the reaction of one East Anglian "detectorist" to the figures given in that report.

But here we have a prime example of the deceit which is used by the pro-collecting lobby in Britain. They try to browbeat their listeners (and they have many) into believing that the "only problem" is with those people that use their metal detectors to find things illegally ("who are not real metal detectorists" - logic check there please?). the literature is full of this. It is a blatant fallacy that it is only illegal artefact hunting which is causing damage to the archaeological record. The non-recording of fnds is just as erosive. The statistics quoted by Connolly omit sites hoovered for artefacts by detector users who do not report their finds and supply proper provenances to the PAS. One might also ask the number of sites in Scotland (where Connolly actually works) that have been gone over by the many hundreds (?) of metal detectorists north of the border when (according to their annual reports) only some 300 sites have for the past couple of years been reported to the Treasure Trove Unit.

Connolly then passed on to the "defensive" attitudes of artefact hunters and their notion of a "Great Conspiracy" against them (sound familiar?). These of course are used as the explanation of why more "metal detector users": are not coming forward to report their shedfulls of finds (a typical example shown in the Mike Pegg video). With regard to this "they are out to get us" attitudes, Connolly notes: "These are now unusual statements and challenged by other detectorists". That statement itself of course was directly challenged at the conference itself when delegates opened their conference packs and found the letter from John Wells of the official representative of the "metal-detecting" community announcing that the NCMD would not participate in the conference because there is allegedly a great government conspiracy against metal detectorists going on. Connolly presumably got a conference pack but does not acknowledge that statement by the body which is the national representative of the metal detecting community. Perhaps he did not notice the letter - or was he hoping others had not?

Moving on, he came to what he portrays as "the Big Rally Debate". I am not going to discuss that here, I will be doing so elsewhere. Rallies are a huge weak point in the pro-collecting arguments in British archaeology. Connolly however seems at last to be recognising this (Slide 8), which is a step forward from his position two years ago and in another forum.

Connolly then discusses "Treasure Trove" (sic) and asks what is missing (Slide 9 and 15 - I'm not at all clear what the relevance of discarded sex toys is to the discussion). He points out that most Treasure finds both side of England's northern border are found by metal detector users and asks - apparently rhetorically - what this "means". I assume that he intends his audience to decide that, like deep ploughing tractor drivers - the disturbance of archaeological contexts with golden goodies in them by metal detector Treasure seeking people is "a jolly good thing". A view I myself would contest, for reasons I've given in this blog.

Then at slide 10, he has a "BIG question". It seems to me like a ridiculous one for an archaeologist to ask . Connolly asks whether anyone can name a site that has been "absolutely destroyed" by metal detecting. This is rhetorical, but what about "relatively destroyed"? What about "severely damaged"? What about "cognitive potential severely compromised?". This begs the question how absolute is absolute in the world of the pro-collecting apologists. There are no doubt significant archaeological sites sites in the UK which have had supermarkets and housing estates built over them with no archaeological mitigation which are not yet "absolutely destroyed" (in the corner under a tree that was not removed, half a pit has survived - but then that pit is meaningless now with the rest of the evidence around it that formed its context gone without record). The fact that nobody in Newcastle raised their voice in protest is symptomatic of the leeway the pro-collecting apologists are nowadays given in the UK - Wanborough comes to mind.
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Heaps of Ancient Coin Collectors

Coin dealer Dave Welsh moaned here about my alleged:

similarly insulting (and unjustified) references to "heap-of-coins-on-a-table" dealers […] I have never displayed a heap of coins on a table, nor do I have any intention of doing so in the future.

I think the writer will find that I have been writing about “heap-of-decontextualised-coin-on-a-table” collection. The ancient coin dealer is however part of the decontextualising trade which stands between the coins in the ground in their archaeological context and the collectors willing to buy a geegaw of unspecified origin to add to those they already have.

This is a contrast to the kind of research on coins which takes as its startpoint coins individually stored each one labeled with the place it was found “Colchester Union 1888”, “STO’86, layer 256A”. This kind of use of ancient coins see them individually as single pieces of evidence which are interpreted in terms of the other evidence from the same and surrounding contexts. Here there is a body of theory, in particular relating to the taphonomy of context. Coin assemblages from certain groups, across a site, between sites in a region, between types of site all provide information about the past. In England for example numismatists like Richard Reece have long been publishing studies of this type which vividly demonstrate the use of ancient coins as a source of archaeological information that goes well beyond what is stamped on them. This information is lost the moment a coin becomes decontextualised and enters the market.

Let us take just a few examples. I am not a great fan of “metal detecting” or "metal detectorists" and “metal detecting rallies” in particular, but the plan here shows a plot published by the Portable Antiquities Scheme of the finds made during one such rally in the fields to the southwest of the small Roman town of Durobrivae.











(Google earth and finds plot from Flickr). As can be seen they form clusters, and a careful study of the Roman coins in these discrete assemblages showed they varied, in other words this was not a random pattern but various factors were affecting the rate of deposition of coins in antiquity across this area in the past. The second figure is a graph of coin finds from several sites in the Chester region (P. Carrington, Towards a model of Roman society in Cheshire First to third centuries AD, graph compiled by Reece and Shotton). The vertical columns are the coin periods established by Richard Reece for the study of British coin Roman assemblages, it can be seen that again patterns of deposition are not random, the assemblages of coins from the different sites have a different profile, and this information now has to be explained.
A third example might be the frequent occurrence of Roman coins in early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and graves. By the sixth century the Roman monetary economy was a vague memory if that, and yet Roman copper alloy coins are found with some frequency in graves, often in a position (when the grave is an inhumation) that indicates that they were carried in a pouch at the waist. Are these just random occurrences? If not, what was the function of these coins? What part did they play in the world vew and belief systems of the Anglo-Saxons? Only careful analysis of the contexts of these finds can tell us – but of course each coin that a metal detectorist has hoiked out of the ground and lumped together with others from other sites into a bulk lot, another piece of information about the past disappears and the archaeological record is depleted. Very probably the metal detectorist never even realized that he was dealing with an ‘out of place’ artefact, and certainly the coin “zapper” across the sea who then destroys it trying to see if the campgate had a star over it or not will never know.

It is a totally different type of coin use to use them in their decontextualised form by the collectors who try to accumulate coins on themes such as “the Twelve labours of Hercules on ancient coins” or obtain “a campgate reverse from every mint” before selling them or whatever. It is in the name of this kind of collection that hundreds of holes are dug in the archaeological sites in the fields of England, Bulgaria and Palestine to accumulate bulk loads of ancient objects gathered from many sites together. The coins are separated out and sorted through, what is not deemed worthy of processing to sell individually is sold as the “uncleaned bulk lots” we see on sale all over the Internet to “coin zappers”. Whether a dealer gets his “Bulgarian specials” in individual packets or packets of four, six, ten, these are still part of the “heap-of-decontextualised-coins-on-a-table” market. Nobody at any stage has attempted to keep the finds from the Flavian fort area separate from the vicus or the temple area of a site separate, even coins from many sites are mixed before the first real sorting.

Aware of criticisms that the coin trade destroys contextual information, some collectors try to justify what they do. They argue that archaeological context is “not important”, that what matters is something they call “numismatic context”. Numismatic context […] is […] mostly concerned with the systematic study of dies and die-links, and also with the study of coin hoards and their dating” (D. Welsh "Preserving Numismatic Context from Destruction by Archaeologists"). The term “die-links” is a fancy way of saying that coin collectors just compare the pictures on one coin with those on another and play “spot the difference” and count how many coins of one or other variant they can find. The definition of "numismatic context" of Missouri coin dealer Wayne Sayles (‘ACCG opposes import restrictions on coins from Italy’) has a slightly more sophisticated wording, but embodies the same idea: "numismatists derive their own “context” from the iconography and epigraphical devices used on coins, the number and chronology of dies used to strike a given series, and the metallurgical content of various issues". The context of a coin is other coins, the only context of deposition of interest is a hoard. All the other archaeological contexts can be trashed as far as a so-conceived numismatic context is concerned. They say they need tens of thousands of decontextualised coins on the open market to study "numismatic context". I say this can be done with tens of thousands of coins whose context is known whether or not it is a hoard, this really is no hindrance to ‘spot the difference’ comparison games. Indeed what Sayles describes is precisely the manner in which coins from known archaeological contexts are also studied. I really do not know what makes the US dealer community think that they and their clients are so superior to everybody else.

The coin collector seems not to be interested in keeping the coins from different archaeological contexts separately, that would hinder sorting them into types and comparing one coin with another. This is a bit odd because series collectors of other materials (conchologists, botanists, lepidopterists, meterorite collectors) frequently catalogue their collections on the basis of where specifically the items come from.

I suspect the people involved in the trade of decontextualised coins do not see that my "heap-on-a-table" label is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Mr Welsh yesterday wrote me off-list an email explaining at unneccessary length that what appears to be a "heap"of coins on his website is not really a "heap" at all, but an assemblage created for imaging, and its not really on a table at all and he'd not heap coins and take every precaution to prevent his goods rubbing together. Nevertheless on V-Coins there are US dealers quite happily mingling ancient coins together in heaps - or box fulls. Some of them are called "dealer's lots". There are collectors who happily heap Late Roman Bronze coins in order to sort them to decide which ones to "zap", no problems with coins rubbing together in kilogramme bag lots is there?

Here's a still from Mike Pegg's wonderful (in a funny kinda way) "metal detecting" video I recommended a while back. Here we are in his back room with his artefact collection. Note how he has them heaped on a surface (no, Mr Welsh is right, it is not - technically - a "table" here either). When the video shows a closeup, there is not a finds label or catalogue number in sight which would allow a particular item to be linked to a particular findspot. I doubt whether many US ancient coin collections have either, whether the storage method is the same or not.


I suppose its a case of "show me your catalogue and I will tell you what kind of a collector you are".

Three articles by Nathan Elkins available online discuss the intellectual consequences of the market in decontextualised numismatic material from archaeological sites:

Elkins, N.T. 2008. A Survey of the Material and Intellectual Consequences of Trading in Undocumented Ancient Coins: a Case Study on the North American Trade.

2008: Elkins, Why coins matter, Trafficking in undocumented and illegally exported ancient coinsin the North American marketplace

2009: The Trade in Ancient Coins in the USA: Scale and Structure

These matters are also discussed on Elkins' blog, and on the SAFE webpage there is a "resources" page with further material discussing the deleterious effects of the trade.
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The Heritage Action Erosion Counter

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Heritage Action is a grassroots organization seeking a better deal for Britain's archaeological mouments and landscapes, a group of volunteers passionately interested in the historic heritage and trying to take action against those, especially goverment bodies and institutions, that seem to be neglecting the duty to look after them. One of the topics of their recent concern is government policy towards artefact hunting and collecting, damaging archaeological sites in Britain on a worrying scale with very little being done by the authorities to prevent it. In his comments to my post ("making it sustainable ...") on this blog Roger Bland, Head of the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme asks:

Equally, how can anyone put any credence into Heritage Action's Artefact Erosion Counter when the basis on which it is calculated is not stated? 316,000 finds a year? How impressive to be so certain on so little evidence. For you simply to say that you believe it to be accurate is hardly adequate.

[The Erosion Counter under discussion can be found here at the moment it stands at some 3,478,000 'recordable' objects that have been collectively removed from the archaeological record since the start of the Portable Antiquities Scheme].

Well, I would like to hear Roger Bland's own best estimate on the number of 'recordable' artefacts that are being taken by artefact hunters (let us say just those using metal detectors) in England and Wales year by year and on what basis he arrives at his estimate. Is it possible to learn that after a decade or more and eight million quid's worth of liaison by the PAS? After not one but three separate 'independent reviews' of the Scheme's operation? It seems a pretty fundamental question to me. Too important to say "we have no idea, but one day we might".

I believe the Heritage Action Erosion counter figures are far more useful as a basis for discussion of current policies than the government's eight million pound "we don't know yet".

As Roger Bland knows only too well (!), I have been concerned about the scale of the erosion of the UK archaeological record due to artefact hunting and collecting for some years. Since no real figures seemed to exist in the context of which to examine the 'propaganda of success' that the pro-collecting lobby was putting out (concerning number of items recorded through the PAS for example), and nobody seemed keen to try and determine this, I took an interest in this problem and have been trying to determine this myself. A few years ago, after constant frustration of attempts to obtain such figures from the PAS and pro-collecting lobby in archaeology, I formed a small informal working group (now no longer active) called EAHAR (Effects of Artefact Hunting on the Archaeological Record) where we discussed this. The erosion counter grew out of these discussions.

I should perhaps admit that to some extent I was involved in the creation of the Heritage Action counter (though it is not by any means my own work or based solely on information I gathered) and I know how much thought and work of a number of dedicated volunteers passionately interested in conserving Britain's historic record actually went into it. I need not add that it did not cost the taxpayer a penny, but addresses questions that bodies that do should have been answering about the common archaeological heritage and how it is being "managed" (which in this case seems a loose use of the term).

A second point that needs to be made with regard Roger Bland's disparaging remarks is that the HA website is one doing “outreach” and not in itself an academic publication. The basis on which the erosion counter is calculated and the underlying definitions are all laid out in the book which Nigel Swift and I have written and will hopefully be out soon. I am sure they will then be well and truly scrutinised. My hope is that they will then be replaced by an even more firm estimate. I should add that in the course of work on the book after Heritage Action had set the Erosion Counter ticking away, we were led to the realisation that there were other factors not initially taken into account which should have led to the rate being set even higher. But as it says on the webpage, it is deliberately a conservative estimate of the erosion caused by the removal of artefacts from the archaeological record by metal detector using artefact hunters.*

I really do not see why Roger Bland scoffs at "316000 objects" a year. It is not a great amount if he himself accepts that there could be up to ten thousand detectorists in England and Wales alone. That’s just 31 objects a year each, a handful of Roman “grots”, a buckle or two, a hammered coin and some other bits. That’s not actually very much at all. There are artefact hunters on PAS who have (they say) recorded a thousand items in the last three years - 300 a year (Pete Twinn the Bristol detectorist who Kate Clark spent a lot of time talking to asserts that is the case with his finds). There are 'highlights' from metal detectorists' collections on UKDFD which show that individual detectorists have many more found in the course of a year. There’s the profoundly disturbing Mike Pegg video referred to on this blog a few months back with his “shedfull” of artefacts. There were the four guys (the video pulled from You Tube immediately after I drew attention to it here) who went on a metal detecting weekend in Suffolk and despite it being wet and horrible each proudly displayed a haul greater than thirty recordable items from just one weekend. There are many cases of personal artefact collections which contain more than thirty new recordable items added annually, especially if the searcher has found a "productive" site, like a Roman settlement or Early Medieval cemetery.

Of course at the other end of the scale are the dozens of sad individuals that plug away at the hobby and despite going out in all weathers for hours on end manage to find one or two things a year. There are a lot of them in the hobby, many of them probably only go out to meet other people they can talk to in a field at rallies and so on. Then there are many who fall between these extremes. What we need is a much greater amount of precision about artefact hunting and collecting patterns. I believe the Heritage Action counter takes these factors fully into consideration.

As things stand at the moment I believe the Heritage Action Erosion Counter is a relatively accurate reflection of the loss to the British archaeological record due to artefact hunting and collecting.

Supporters of the PAS scoff at the figures, but (as did Roger Bland just now) omit to address the second part of the question I ask about it. Even if the supporters of a "partnership" with artefacts and hunters think these figures are "wrong" (as they must in order to save face), then by how much must these figures be "wrong" to make the situation an acceptable one? Twenty percent, thirty, fifty? This is a question to which I would like to hear the answer.

Make objects “rotting in museums” (sic) available to collectors? Have they any idea what they are talking about?

Alfredo De La Fe New York dealer in largely unprovenanced ancient coins and antiquities obviously has a poor impression of what happens in the world’s museums. On a collectors' discussion forum he writes:

“If the issue is one of conservation than the entire archeological lobby has done a very poor job of it on a whole. I would wager than more antiquities disintegrate on a yearly basis due to improper storage and handling because of lack of funding than those that enter into the antiquities and numismatic trade.
The solution is actually quite simple. […] museums have BILLIONS of dollars worth of antiquities and coins that are otherwise disintegrating or will never be studied or displayed within my lifetime or even my great grandchildren's lifetime that could be sold and used to PROPERLY preserve and study mankind's history.”

To a point, I agree with Mr De La Fe; US archaeologists must be doing a poor job on the whole of educating and informing the citizens of that country since people like him can come out with nonsense like this on a public forum showing they have no idea what museums are for or how they work.

In the news every so often appears an item that in one museum or another something has gone missing, or a painting is shown to have been damaged by poor handling, or that a museum has problems financing adequate storage space for excavation archives or some such similar problem. These are problems museums have and struggle to deal with, and yes, those which are caused by lack of facilities and resources are most often caused by poor funding by local authorities. News reports like these however never fail to be mentioned on the websites and discussion forums of collectors of portable antiquities. These are intent on creating the impression among their membership that this is the norm rather than an exception – hence antiquity dealer De La Fe’s ill-informed “wager” above. This is all intended of course to bolster the “simple solution” model; the "best remedy" for this "general problem" is to put the contents of museum stores on the market for private collectors to snap up and fill their homes with whatever they want.

This is of course one of the prime identity-forming mantras of being a collector of portable antiquities these days. To be accepted as one of the community, one has to join the chanting in unison,

“give us what is rotting in your museum stores and we’ll not have to buy looted antiquities”.

In this community, the accepted response is then the chant:

“if they won’t let us have what’s rotting in museum stores then they cannot blame us for buying looted antiquities, can they?”

In fact, as Coggins (1995, 61,67) notes the proposal of an unrealistic notion that the release of ‘duplicates’ would satiate the current and future market is simply a "smokescreen for inaction". One of many, I think, in the world of antiquity dealing.

I’d like to know just how much of the material archived in the archaeological stores (actually often kept in very good conditions), even of major museums, a dealer like Mr De La Fe could actually make “billions of dollars” on. I wonder if he really has any idea what sort of material makes up the bulk of the archives from modern excavations. Take Poland’s museums at the moment, boxes of prehistoric and medieval pottery and other material from large excavations on the projected route of motorways. Very little of this, aside from a few decorated ceramic spindlewhorls and a few brooches and pins is the sort of thing one would find in a New York antiquity dealer's sales offer. Or as another example I am familiar with, the excavation archive from the famous multi-period excavations at Mucking, Essex currently housed in the British Museum. I expect some of the Anglo-Saxon grave goods from the two cemeteries of the latter might find a US buyer if the price was sufficiently low to be attractive, but not all of the artefacts from the cemeteries are attractive collectables (hundreds of iron nails and other corroded – but now conserved and stabilized - bits of iron objects for example). How many sherds of Bronze Age cooking pot could Mr De La Fe actually shift a year? What is the size of the US collectors’ market for smithing slag samples, crucible sherds, fired clay oven fragments, roman tegula fragments, froth flotation residues and charcoal? What about the wet timbers from a well that were removed from a site near me in 2006 and undergoing conservation? Would a US collector want it now, or when the conservation is finished (and would he pay for that too)? How would he display it? How would they look after it? After all, in the Mike Pegg video mentioned yesterday we the manner in which one collector of sensitive ancient metal objects was keeping them.

I expect really what the dealers want is to be able to cherry-pick, take all the whole pots and legible coins and sell them, leaving the museum to look after the rest as their (incomplete) reserve collection. I wonder what they think the function of such a facility would be? Who would use it and for what after they've taken what they want? What kind of an idea is that?

Typically De La Fe does not go further and outline what he would consider to be the “proper preservation and study of mankind’s history” which would result from selling off the more commercially desirable bits of public collections. Obviously this "preservation" would therefore not be in a Universal Museum like New York’s Metropolitan just down the road from Mr De La Fe.

C.C. Coggins 1995, 'A licit International Trade in Ancient Art: Let there be light', International Journal of Cultural Property 4,61-80

Informative metal detecting video

Metal detecting Down to Earth with Mike Pegg

I bought this DVD a while back for 'research purposes', but bits of it are currently available on You Tube.

The first is one of my favourite scenes (actually not included in the copy I bought), which just about sums up the whole ethos. Take a look at what "Metal Mickey" has to say. For those not familiar with the accent, here is a transcript of the first part:

“Metal detecting’s got to be, in my eyes, one of the most relaxing hobbies anybody can get into. You are out in the sticks, [you] don’t see anybody, just me and Dad [?] normally, just waiting for that signal, the signal could be anything, and that’s what makes the hobby… waiting for that signal, because when you dig down, you just don’t know what its going to be… now, when you were a kid, um, even older kids, there was this sweet, right, called a “lucky dip” where you’d go in the shop and get something like a Jamboree Bag and you would not know what was in it until you opened it. And that’s exactly the same with metal detecting. This is why, um, living in England, well, in Britain, we are so lucky, this is the biggest candy shop you are going to find. This is so steeped with history, we go back so far…. and people have lost so many things over the years, and its all there, waiting for us. Um, even on the… whether its on the beach, on the farm, it [does] not matter, its everywhere, paths, back gardens… Absolutely strew[n], the whole island, the whole of the British Isles is one big candy box waiting to be explored. We can all do it, and I’ll tell you what, once you get out into it, once you start getting that bug, you’ll never want to get is back. It’s a really, really worthwhile thing. It should be taught in schools. We could get the kids out, away from that computer screen, and it teaches them the sense of history and who they are and where they are from, and it puts back all this trouble we read in the newspaper and what you see on the news, you leave it behind, when you go on a field, you leave it all behind; it’s just you in the field with your metal detector. In fact, personally I call it “treasureology”, because you are after treasure, so why not tresureology?”

Then on the rest of the YouTube video, we are treated to a demonstration of “how its done” with an irritating soundtrack. Best not to watch.

Rather more interesting is another YouTube fragment: Down To Earth -- metal detecting tips. This is a show-and-tell sequence which gives quite an interesting insight into how a British collector of portable antiquities made by metal detecting is likely to be treating the artefacts they remove from an archaeological site (they claim they are "rescuing" them, but that's another story). Note that these finds are just thrown in a heap on the table in a breeze-block built shed, some of them in plastic tubs on the floor. None of them is individually bagged with a label giving details of provenance. “See the patina?” – yes, but we see no catalogue numbers. We note that bronze disease is left untreated and at one stage the camera sweeps across crumbs of an object that has disintegrated while being 'curated' by Mr Pegg and his Dad. Some pretty cringeworthy presentations of the artefacts shown; so much for the 'homegrown conoisseur' model of the pro-collecting advocacy. "Krotrel bells"? Crotal I think he means… So what is likely to happen to this collection of artefacts when Mr Pegg passes on to the great metal detecting fields in the sky? Will anyone actually be able to correlate more than a handful of them with their original findspot? This collector says nothing about the cataloguing system he uses, or the need to catalogue such finds at all.

Mike Pegg tells us he’s been detecting 25 years. “Although this is nothing really, what I’ve got in my collection, I could not get it in the shed […] I think, you name it, I think I’ve had it from every single period”. What is on this table top is a selection of what he has “detected” and dug up, probably from a number of different places in his home are and beyond, all mixed up together. What happened to the rest then? Note that he admits that if the beginner collector does not understand what he is looking at, he’ll probably throw away significant finds in making a selection. In fact a lot of evidence emerges that suggest that large numbers of finds which would be collected and studied in an archaeological survey are routinely discarded by metal detectorists exploiting a site for collectables and what (if anything) reaches the Portable Antiquities Scheme is already a highly selective and largely meaningless sample of what was originally in the soil. “Lead, I’ve got no idea where it comes from sometimes, it seems to follow us around, […] It’s a bit of a bugger really, because you get lots and lots of little pieces, you’re forever digging lead up”. He is keepingt it in a scrap bucket, no doubt ready to be sold off as scrap metal. The lead of course did not fall from the sky, this is evidence of past activity, the “scrap metal” of this detector user is of course disregarded archaeological material. In an archaeological field survey its distribution across a site would be plotted in detail.

The You Tube video fragment "Metal Detecting Down to Earth with Mike Pegg part 2" is excruciatingly boring. Then there is one called Treasures ("Finds made by my Dad and me over the years"). Mr Pegg asserts “the finds in this sequence have mostly been excavated in Dorset” – Hmm, the (fake) Athenian “owl” coin too?

Videos like this raise a number of questions about the hobby called by its practitioners in Britain "metal detecting". It is useful to have resources like this, actually made and distributed by "the detectorists" themselves as a basis for discussion and to allow us to create an impression for ourselves of who goes "metal detecting" and why. There is plenty more like this in the internet to choose from, but Mike Pegg is one of my personal favourites.