Metal Detectors Don't Damage Historical Sites, People Using them Do

Grabby hands

Electro Archaeology examined 3600 tweets on "Battlefield Recovery, an execrable show that turns the looting of war dead into ‘entertainment’, shown on Saturday on Channel 5 in the UK" ('Reactions to Battlefield Recovery episode 1' January 11, 2016) and produced some graphics with the conclusion: "I’d say on balance, the twittersphere was outraged at this television ‘show’....". The presenters might try to justify themselves by playing the victim of the prejudices of some "idle, deceitful, bored, unemployed people within one community who do not like metal detectorists", the truth is what this particular group of metal detector userrs is shown doing with the tool is abhorrent to many people that saw the programme. As one non-archaeological tweeter quoted put it:

Imagine if some dick with a metal detector and a JCB did this to your grandparents graves from either war in France... #BattlefieldRecovery

How many "responsible metal detectorists" are there in the blogosphere, twittersphere or on the forums making the same point equally forcefully and what does their paucity tell you?