John Winter cites an ancient (1993) Sunday Times editorial (without giving too many details, like the name of the author) which has all his 200 guffawing mates clapping their hands in delight (“The past is too important to be left just to the professionals”, 17 August 2013 — 19 Comments). Winter says this ancient pre-Treasure Act (and pre-PAS) text is "even more relevant today re the relationship between detectorists and archaeologists". Is it? What, precise, relationship is he talking about? The fifteen million quid "partnership" with the Bloomsbury-based Portable Antiquities Scheme for example, how much MORE of a relationship does he want, a thirty-two-million-pound one? What is the guy on about? The Sunday Times is based on a report on what was (then) "the largest collection of Iron Age coins so far unearthed in Britain". No name, no location, no record of what happened to the goodies. The text calls Treasure hunters with metal detectors "amateurs of the past". This seems to me a misunderstanding, the author is muddling artefact hunters with amateur archaeologists which, as Heritage Action points out, are two different things. Treasure hunters (artefact/relic hunters, metal detectorists) are collectors. Are all bird egg collectors "amateurs of ecology"? All Militaria collectors "amateur soldiers"? The idea seems preposterous, but its a mantle artefact hunters willingly don.Anyway, for the tekkies, that is not the main point. "Sensible professionals", the article goes on in pontifical tone:
are learning to work with the treasure-hunters and direct their quests in useful directions, rather than look down their noses at them. They had better. The past belongs to everybody, not just to the members of a professional close shop.”[That's why I'd like to know who wrote this for the Sunday Times - the phrase is "closed shop"; this looks like it was typed by a metal detectorist]. Now, let us note what else the artefact hunters missed here. That phrase "direct their quests in useful directions" is significant. This is exactly what I and Heritage Action have been arguing all along, instead of willy-nilly random hoiking to enrich a personal collection, the use of metal detectors could be regulated by a permit system and directed to where such survey is needed for heritage management purposes. Then there would be no issue whatsoever. THIS is the kind of co-operation the Sunday Times advocates, that artefact hunters search where the archaeologists they are collaborating fully with "direct" them to. Is that what John Winter advocates too? I hope so.
The NCMD bloke of those halcyon days of yore was more literate than the ones one comes across nowadays and writes poetically of this text as an "admonition to those [archaeologists, of course] whose fossilised attitudes are as unbending as the organic bodies preserved in their museums". Now personally I do not see much of an admonition in the extract John Winter published, still less any evidence whatsoever in the article to support the assertion discussed (has it been edited out by Mr Winter? Why?). Anyhow, detectorist Winter reveals his point in republishing this odd text, in big red letters he writes (after the "staggering £1.75 million reward" bit):
So many significant finds have been made by detectorists in the 20 years since this article was written. Unfortunately they [detectorists] are still been pilloried, chastised and ridiculed by some so-called professionals. Has anything really changed?Has anything much changed in artefact hunting since 1993? Fifteen million quid thrown at "outreach" and "partnership", what has it changed? Because we can forget those "nationally important finds" needlessly hoiked out for the most part from undisturbed archaeological contexts below ploughsoil (or in pasture like the Staffordshire Pan). Treasure finds have to be reported by law, like if you find a dead body in the woods. You can get locked up in the UK if you conceal the find of either. So, what - apart from that - has changed, at what cost, and what would it cost everyone to get FULL compliance (and is there a better way to get it)? But of course tekkies don't want to talk about that, they like finding optimistically laudatory articles from the Stone Age and then, without enquiring more deeply into the reason why, moan that not everybody who looks at the issues surrounding artefact hunting write in such glowing tones.
Is there really nothing that Mr Winter can see looking around him on the forums that needs "chastising" in the behaviour of the people with metal detectors which British law lets loose on the archaeological sites up and down the country? Nothing at all?
There is a good reason to take a look at the first 20 or so simpleton comments below his post (the "womble" one is a real cracker; there are too the usual "grave robber" and "dishonest archaeologist" tropes that no mention of the word "archaeologist" in tekkie circles would be complete without). These reactions well illustrate the problems we are up against trying to get these people into a real partnership by mere persuasion ("outreach" and "education"). The PAS argues that given enough resources, they can reach these people, instil best practice there, explain why we'd like it done like this and not like that and why. Can they? I think the evidence of the last fifteen years of them trying is fair and square against it, which is one of the leitmotifs of this blog.
Randy Dee for some reason has a go at me, but then he got told off for using my real name, "for obvious reasons" - obvious to them maybe, but I admit I find their desire to refer to somebody while omitting using their name a bit child-like. One "jbm1934" on reading the article (among other things) reckons:
The hand of friendship and co-operation was held out nationally with the Denison and Dobinson report of the 1980s. Note there who refused to co-operate in putting that seminal document together (clue: their initials are N.C.M.D.). Yet still we find many uncouth and abusive detectorists spitting in that hand, refusing to work responsibly with us to a common aim. Howland, Fletcher and Taylor are just three examples of this undercurrant that come to mind, but there are many more in that stable. Then there are the unreported objects, either of detectorists that only report a token portion of what they find, or detectorists that simply refuse to (or cannot be bothered) to report finds to the PAS (and that includes those that instead elect to use the private database UKDFD by another bunch representing an 'alternative responsibility').
The problem is neither the "blacks" (lock them up) or the "whites" (shake their hand), but the myriad of unprincipled "grey detectorists" which basically have turned their back on the rest of us and made no effort to understand what the problem is. If the latter do not like being talked about, that's their tough luck, because as far as I am concerned they are a serious problem. It is also one which - I must say - it is very disappointing to see that the "white" detectorists themselves are doing virtually nothing to help resolve. Indeed, many of them are doing their damned best (the moderators of a certain forum for example, vigorously censoring the posts) to hide the problem and its scale, or attempt to dismiss its importance (usually by mounting an attack on those who want to discuss it openly - an example of which can also be seen in John Winter's comments thread).
What remains of the evidence that can tell us about the past through the application of archaeological methodologies is too important to be abandoned to random hoiking by the unprincipled.