Antiquitist 'Thinking' and Truthiness

In his reply to the comments of Heritageaction, Wayne Sayles has perfectly illustrated exactly why there is little to no effective dialogue on portable antiquity collecting issues. He writes categorically:

Messrs Swift and Barford, protestations and denials aside, are by standard definition cultural property nationalists. 

A moment's thought would reveal that this is an ineffective label to apply to anything Nigel Swift and Heritage Action have said on the topic of metal detecting for example. The notion of so-called 'cultural property nationalism' only applies in the narrow mental context of believing everything here is about "repatriation", an American antiquitists' fixation to be sure, but not what this debate is about at all. This is just unthinking mud-slinging and name-calling substituting for refutation again.  I am reminded here by a colleague of the concept of Truthiness, not as defined by a book, but from the heart (sorry, can't get it to embed):

 The Colbert Report: The Word - Truthiness  October 17, 2005*

I am sure this finds some resonance in the ACCG. Mr Swift has already dealt with Mr Sayles' concept of a "moral compass" (in effect "not everything that is wrong is wrong to everybody" - duh) and they-can't-touch-you-for-it-legality, which shows that he's got the coineys well-sussed.


But we appear to have once again become deflected from what the original topic of the discussion was, which was the inability of the antiquitists' lobby to marshal any real arguments in favour of what they are selfishly doing to the archaeological record.


* for the topical reference, now history, Harriet Miers