Heritage Action discuss the case of the Loughborough Coin and Search Society. They have a “Detecting Liaison Officer” whose job includes finding farmers willing to allow treasure hunting hoikers onto their land to trash the surface evidence from archaeological sites there with their metal detectors and spades. It seems that:
providing a day’s detecting for 50 club members will net a farmer £400. Or, a large weekend rally could earn him “up to £8,000″. Not half bad for opening a gate to a field that’s perceived by the customers to be “productive” (or “an unprotected archaeological site” as archaeologists would term it!)Apparently the farmer doesn’t get to see the stuff taken away, but "later sent “a brief resumé of what was found”...". There's something else equally disturbing. Far from being anything akin to landscape archaeology ("just learning about the history of the region") of the PAS mantras, it is in fact merged with a coin collecting club. Artefact hunting members take their finds back to club HQ to finds tables and flog them to the coin collector members. The PAS FLO is apparently a frequent guest at such club meetings. Does Wendy Scott set up her recording table right next to the sales table, or are they on facing sides of the room?
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1 comment:
Well it does seem as if PAS having any truck with dig-and-flog operations is further evidence that boosting the database is the main pressure on FLOs these days rather than improving behaviour.
They can hardly claim they are making a difference to behaviour by attendingas it's still going on nor can they pretend they aren't aiding and abetting it. After all, the club openly boasts about the PAS connection to farmers as part of their marketing ploy.
Incidentally, it's particularly ironic that the database entries PAS picks up at such places is likely to be far more corrupted by false find spots than most. If there are flogging tables available what more simple than to flog stuff you didn't find at the club dig? (Unless of course it can't possibly happen because people who think dig-and-flog is OK are actually in it purely for love of history and wouldn't dream of messing up the database!)
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