Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Farmer Brown Debates Philosophy with Detectorist John Winter

Farmer Silas Brown loses patience with the platitudinous waffle quoted in self-interest by an unreflexive artefact hunter:

A detectorist has just quoted the well-worn slogan: “The past belongs to everybody, not just to the members of a professional close shop.” But [...] it is precisely because the past is everyone’s that it needs to be excavated in a structured, scientific manner by experts to avoid everyone suffering “an irreplaceable loss of knowledge of the past”! Anyone that says otherwise is claiming a private right to damage the public interest aren’t they? Not in my back yard they won’t. If you want a moral philosopher don’t look at the top end of a metal detecting machine.

Britain has a long tradition of amateur archaeology (look at the number of societies and amateur groups and community [real] archaeology schemes), the study of the past has never been there in any way a "closed shop", and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Alongside this archaeology, however, since the 1970s there have been those (Treasure hunters, artefact/relic hunters, so-called "metal detectorists") who want to mine archaeological sites for collectable geegaws which give a "touchy-feely" access to the past, appealing to emotions rather than intellect. Both have, arguably, validity, rather like the difference between reading an epic novel and watching its TV adaptation (both are art forms, both are cultural phenomena). What I think the problem is that many of those who want to do the latter insist on their "right" to do it in a manner which, as Silas Brown complains is claiming a private right to damage the public interest by causing by their careless hoiking an irreplaceable loss of knowledge of the past. It is not creating a so-called "closed shop" to advocate introducing changes to make this hobby come into step with the needs of the sustainable management of a fragile and finite resource. After all, it is what those that say they are the "partners" of the PAS - set up to achieve this - declare they want to be part of. Let us see that the fifteen million quid have not been wasted, let us see them actually doing that and promoting it among their non-compliant fellows who are more or less secretively just taking pocketfulls of the geegaw relics of the past (archaeological evidence) and hoarding them away for their own personal entertainment and profit, rather than using the data they disturb, erode and destroy in the process to create anything that serves the wider public benefit.