Saturday 14 December 2013

Focus on Metal Detectorists: An Imagined "Blunder"


Over on a metal detecting forum near you, one "Camo" (Forum Administrator) who appears to be a detectorist from Portland, Oregon with reading difficulties, tries ("Another Paul Barford Blunder") to explain his point. He refers to my post on the final resolution of the Flamenbaum case (the ins and outs of this blog has been following now for several years) and with a screeenshot of my text (presumably so readers of his forum do not follow a link back to my blog) asks:
"So What's all this about?"
He then answers his own question with a screenshot  (perhaps to show he read it) of the newspaper article to which I link:
"Here's the scoop…………" 
(scoop?) He then says mysteriously with apostrophe abuse:
"……..Personal agenda's will always surface".
Pardon?  The clue to this rather odd text seems to be in the comments underneath the American newspaper article where there is some superficial banter about this object going back to Iraq on the assumption that "Germany looted" the item from Iraq. If that is to what the metal detectorist is making reference, I suggest Camo, before accusing me of making ("another") "blunder" actually does a bit of reading and try to work out how and when this tablet entered the collection of a German museum and on what legal grounds it was returned by the US to that museum. The answer is just a few mouse-clicks away. There is no blunder. The object stolen from a German museum should have been returned years ago.

Is it not indicative that we see once again that the only interest of these people (allegedly only in it fer th' 'istry)  in such matters is as a chance to try and demonstrate an imagined "blunder' in the arguments of those that challenge current policies on artefact hunting and collecting? Show me a proper discussion of anything connected with this case or the Medici Archive, Kapoor, Syrian or Egyptian looting etc. etc. on a metal detecting forum or blog. I doubt there is a single one anywhere, which I think is rather telling.

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