Sunday 27 July 2008

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.

8 comments:

Metal micky said...

It would seem that you are the type of person that likes to put others down just to make your self look good. You are not helping the P.A.S by slagging of others. mike pegg has been metal detecting for over 30 years although he may not be as accademic as some jumped up archaeologist such as you. But he is a true archaeologist,unlike you

Paul Barford said...

Hello Mr Pegg,

I’m not sure exactly why you say I am “putting you down” by discussing your video, I think what you are doing is wrong and I say why. I say the video is useful to an outside observer because it is a real genuine metal detectorist talking and not something made up by your critics to show why metal detecting is a bad thing. The outside observer may well take the view from what I write that I am a jumped up, arrogant bastard and therefore “wrong”, or they might take the view that what that video shows really is not a good thing for Britain’s archaeological heritage. That’s not for me to say, I present my views in the way that suits me (it is my personal blog) and you’ve presented yours.

I think however if I was to go about producing a video “why metal detecting is good for you” intended for a wider audience, I’d personally go about it a different way and put a bit of thought into what audience I am trying to reach and how the message will come across to those outside your own circles.

I am not sure why talking about metal detecting is “not helping the PAS”. Firstly, the PAS has had millions of pounds of public money to help itself. Secondly, what you are saying is like suggesting that criticizing bird egg collectors is not helping the RSPB, or criticizing loggers is not helping Greenpeace. That is just totally illogical. PAS is set up to encourage best practice, I say heaping up all the finds you’ve made over the past thirty years unlabelled and higgldy piggledy on a table where some are suffering bronze disease, is NOT best practice. So, how many of that shedfull of finds have been reported to the PAS?

If Mike Pegg has been “metal detecting for thirty years” and if he’s been taking all the lead out and forgetting where it came from and just heaping the finds higgledy piggledy like we see in the video then I’d say he’s been doing avoidable damage to archaeological assemblages. I really do not see that heap of objects on that table, as any kind of “archaeology”, true or not. The PAS may have a different view, I don’t know, they will not say.

Are there any archaeological publications with the name “Mike Pegg” at the top to accompany those artefact heaps ? How many and where were they published?

Anonymous said...

paul you are a complete ell bend!! get a life you sad sad man.

Paul Barford said...

and I expect I can get a lot of tips about that from somebody writing under an assumed name from an empty and newly-formed profile who get their kicks from reading really old blog posts on metal detecting and sending rude comments.

Do you have a metal detector "Deanicuss"? Is it big and black with lots of knobs and a backlit screen?

Paul Barford said...

Oh yes, yes you do, don't you Mr Pollard - one of those squeaky ones. http://www.youtube.com/user/deanicuss?feature=comment-thumb

a BT engineer and an avid "gamer" too; one might retort, "get a life" yourself ...

Anonymous said...

Wow you can type in deanicuss in google you are clever Barford! Now lets delve into your life shall we!

Anonymous said...

NO BARFORD YOUR THE SAD MAN ARSEHOLE.

Paul Barford said...

Well, there we are then. Sorted.

Unlike sad metal detectorists with something to hide, I do not write under a pseudonym, so finding out about the real person I am is probably not that difficult.

But that's not the point, its not WHO says what that is important in the heritage debate, but the issues raised that are imnportant. Here we see the typical metal detectorist response - "arsehole". Personal attack and mindless harassment is about as much as they can muster in reply to reasoned argument.

There are 10 000 or more like "Deanicuss" and the subject of the original post which the PAS is proud to call their "partners". Just look where that public money is going.

 
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