The biggest Ever Metal Detector Hauls

Some metal detectorist dishonestly lifted this text without giving its source. Perhaps he did not like the sound of the word "haul" (Anon. 'The biggest ever metal detector hauls', virgin media.com money n.d.). Let's have a look:

We've all seen them – people in headphones searching the ground with metal sticks. Often called geeks, enthusiastic ‘detectorists’ sweep the nation come rain or shine in search of the equivalent of a lottery win. These 10 lucky punters won’t mind being called geeks as they each found ancient treasures worth life-changing sums.

Then, the important details:

"the value could be huge", "rewarded with a cheque for £35000", "the haul was worth between £500000 and £1 million", "netted a handy £47000", "picked up a cool £270000", "for a cool £1.1 million", "it is unknown whether Blackburn and Lee received payment for their find" (what d'ya reckon?), "the 10000 coins are now being assessed for value", "value was set at a staggering £1.75 million", "assessed as being worth £3.2 million".

Two points, these are just ten finds. Every year since the Treasure Act came into force, several hyundred 'Treasure' finds are made, cyurrently the numbers run at about 800 a year. How much is buying back the common heritage from these exploitive people costing the nation every year? This is one figure you'll not get from the PAS. Over the past 125 years how much has Britain's laissez faire attitude to what, in any other country (except the USA) would be called "looting" cost the nation? How much money have these people taken that could have gone somewhere else, and that could be saved by having a permit system?

Secondly, as far as I am aware (please correct me if I am wrong) but only ONE of these finds (and that's the one that predates the 1996 Treasure Act supposedly intended to secure such objects for proper study) has so far been the subject of a proper monographic publication with full analyses and descriptions. All the rest are to all intents and purposes still unpublished except in brief interim accounts. When is Britain going to deal with the huge backlog of reporting such nationally-important finds, and who is going to pay for it. Again a permit system could resolve this problem.

Thirdly, a disturbingly high proportion of these finds are coming from undisturbed and unthreatened deposits under the ploughsoil (or from unploughed grassland sites, Staffordshire Pan for example). This goes against principles five and six of the Code of Practice for Responsible Detecting in England and Wales (the official one that is, the one nobody really abides by any more, preferring more liberal ones such as the NCMD hatchet-job)

"only within the depth of ploughing [...] be careful to ensure that no damage is done to the archaeological value of the land [...] Endeavour not to damage stratified archaeological deposits". Yeah, right. 

They do none of this, hoik stuff out and still get the full "reward".

Fourthly, these are the principle finds on which tekkie apologists base their over-used "we find, dig up and responsibly report wonderful things the archaeologists would never dig up" mantra. The thing to notice is that it is precisely this type of finds that a finder is legally obliged to report. One wonders however how much the law-abidingness of these people would decline if the "rewards" system was scrapped (fr example in favour of a permit system). The number of 'finders' (read: seekers) currently declining to accept Treasure awards (usually the smaller sums) gives a clue as to the truth behind the Treasure hunters' claims "Oim not in it fer the munny"/ "can't make munny outof metal detecting" and all the rest of the "only intrestid in the 'istry" claptrap with which they fob off those who ask why they do it.

UPDATE 18.08.13
Some of them do have a conscience, he added the link to the source of the lifted piece when he saw what I wrote.