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The PAS Bloomsbury boys may label expressing concerns for best practice and archaeological conservation "trolling", but as pointed out by one of those thus attacked from the chipped and grimy Neo-Classical porticoes made so infamous as a backdrop to one of British TV's most awful programmes on archaeology ever, sometimes somebody needs to speak up if the PAS is failing to do so. Heritage Action ('Regton’s acknowledge Heritage Action was quite right and signal PAS’s outreach is inadequate!') point out that following their recent article criticising metal detector supplier Regton's for not promoting the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales among newcomers to the hobby, the company reacted the very next day by featuring the official Code of Responsible Detecting on their website!
The PAS Bloomsbury boys may label expressing concerns for best practice and archaeological conservation "trolling", but as pointed out by one of those thus attacked from the chipped and grimy Neo-Classical porticoes made so infamous as a backdrop to one of British TV's most awful programmes on archaeology ever, sometimes somebody needs to speak up if the PAS is failing to do so. Heritage Action ('Regton’s acknowledge Heritage Action was quite right and signal PAS’s outreach is inadequate!') point out that following their recent article criticising metal detector supplier Regton's for not promoting the Code of Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales among newcomers to the hobby, the company reacted the very next day by featuring the official Code of Responsible Detecting on their website!
So, by virtue of calling a spade a spade we have brought about (in 1 day and free of charge) a big positive step for conservation, one that 15 years of archaeological outreach had totally failed to produce. [...] Incredibly then, a metal detecting retailer is now making the crucial statement that six days of expensive prime time programming and breathless treasure-blather failed to get across! [...]
The author of that text has a forlorn hope. He belongs to Heritage Action, an organization composed entirely of decent reasonable guys. He obviously assumes that the British Museum's Portable Antiquity Scheme is staffed by fifty decent reasonable guys able to observe what is going on, draw conclusions and take effective action upon them:
Perhaps PAS can take heed of what has happened though. Endless sucking up may not be as effective as – what shall we call it – muscular outreach. There are still hundreds of other artefact hunting organisations (retailers, manufacturers and detecting clubs) citing the NCMD con-Code as being the one to use. If Regton’s can be shamed into at least mentioning the right one then they can too. Or are we to have another fifteen years of polite diplomacy and the avoidance of allegedly “unhelpful” words like “knowledge theft”, “selfish” and “unheroic”? A lot of people, not one of them a responsible detectorist, will be hoping so.I expect we will soon find out.
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