Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Commercial Rallies are Damaging the Archaeological Record, Fact.

On a metal detecting discussion list near you, a dispute has broken out about a commercial artefact hunting rally organized in Northamptonshire by Central Searchers ("CS RALLY UPDATE IMPORTANT" Tue Aug 13, 2013 5:27 pm). Despite the hot weather, the farmer with whom they'd arranged to go and loot the collectables from any archaeological assemblages on his land said they could not come as he'd not cut the crops yet. He did however give the contact details of his mate who'd got drier corn and had some fields available, so instead of giving everybody back the ticket money, in order to hang onto it, they shifted the rally there.

we have now arranged a brand new farm that is about a mile down the road from the original site, the land is undetected according to farmer apart from an archaeological survey we are the first to have permission from current landowner and his father who farmed before [...] The site has lots of crop marks, his farm yard is a scheduled monument of a priory and monastery, and a moated site there are Iron Age Tumuli on his land [...] also Minelab will be in attendance all weekend [...] This is along with other trade stands etc

Member "martinrad" (Wed Aug 14, 2013 12:16 pm) was having none of that though:

thats one of my permissions a Mr Pickering and maybe you should tell the truth a bit as the farm has been searched on for the past 30 years as have most of the farms in the area.

Member "Toby" (Wed Aug 14, 2013 3:11 pm) says the same thing:

I'm sorry to say that everyone is being completely mislead (sic) over this new land. It has had a considerable amount of detecting done on it over many years; it is simply not true that the land has never been detected. It may also be worth bearing in mind that this farmland adjoins the land where last years rally was held and we can all recall how poor that was.

The significance of this is clear. Artefact hunters go out to hoik artefacts out of the archaeological record. They know this is a finite resource, once you've removed what there is to remove, you cannot put it back and start again. Thus it is that when they sell tickets for commercial rallies they stress not only how much archaeology there is in the area they are making available (note here the dangled carrot that archaeologists had looked at the land in the past - "must be something of interest there" thinks the tekkie), but that it has not been done over before. This is clear evidence that they know full well the damage their exploitive and erosive hobby is doing to the archaeological record, and do not give a tinkers. All they are interested is getting their hands on the geegaws before somebody else does. Let them deny it, the evidence is clear.

Gill Evans' reply to that was that she was only repeating what the landowner had said and suggested that if the land "had been done to death" it was "by nighthawks". Note that "martinrad" and "Toby" were not alleging that the archaeological record was exhausted, but were talking about former permissions. "Martinrad" claims that these fields are part of his permissions, and have been detected on for the past 30 years, and "Toby" confirms that the land has definitely been detected on before with permission. It would appear that the land that is 'undetected according to the current land owner' has in fact been detected on for many years. Maybe the farmer lied just to get the tekkies' money?

Member "Nige150" ("Digging the past to save the future", Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:42 am) adds:

I've been to many digs where we were told the land has never been detected on, only to find later that locals or a local club have been doing it for years etc etc, or that the farmer lets anybody on. It seems to be par for the course these days.

In other words, it is becoming increasingly duifficult in the UK today to find any archaeological site which has not been "done over" in the past four decades by the relic-grabbing beep-beep boys. Forum member "Count Elmsley" (Thu Aug 15, 2013 9:10 am) is dismayed by this discussion:

I was shocked to read the above posts, the weekend I was really looking forward to now seems to be other than I thought [...] I booked for the whole weekend. Now however, I am worried to say the least [...] Were it not for the rule that my £55 payment was 'Non Refundable', I would be asking for a refund. As a pensioner with limited funds, I cannot afford to waste my money on an unproductive field. I realise that finds cannot be guaranteed of course, but when we are promised virgin soil only to find that this is misleading, I am feeling very angry to say the least. Therefore I am requesting CS to look into this carefully with the Landowner and let us have the actual facts about this land and it's suitability for the Rally planned.

And how does he propose they do that if the farmer insists it's a virgin site? In an ideal world, all they'd need to do was look on the PAS database and see if there were any metal detected finds on it from those fields. But then it's not an ideal world, detectorists going on there (as they'll quickly tell you) are under no obligation to report all their non-Treasure finds, so many do not. Those that do have the actual place they were found (even if they truthfully report them) 'protected' so nobody can see where they are really from, it's the sort of public misinformation that makes the PAS database useless for this kind of purpose. So, as usual, it's all take-take, no give.