"Sussex Detectorist" Hides

Alex G. Bliss a PAS partner from Sussex boasts about his self-recording on Twitter. I guess he's looking for a pat on the head. I expect he gets loads from FLOs and archaeologists who don't give a tinkers about or a moment's thought to artefact hunting.

This morning I made a comment on one of his latest tweets, taking a different approach to what he wrote. I stand on my conviction that there is something here about private collecting of archaeological artefacts that needs open public discussion, and I see no reason why somebody genuinely "interested in the past" and collaborating with archaeologists in the preservation and sustainable use of the archaeological record should not share those concerns and should be in any way opposed to such a discussion.

Mr Bliss however seems not to be of such a persuasion, he has blocked my access to his twitter account apparently to prevent me from seeing what he writes,.

That is the tekkie devotion to transparency and openness. Mr Bliss is perfectly willing to show us (the stakeholders) some of the bits of his collection when he feels that doing so makes (with the help of the PAS) artefact hunting look like "a good thing". THis is simply exploiting the PAS to legitimate the hobby. In other words this is the facadism I spoke of earlier. The moment however it is pointed out that beneath the facade is another series of issues which need to be addressed and which the declarative presentation is supposed to hide, he clams up.

Metal detectorists (and Mr Bliss), if an edifice is crumbling because the foundations are faulty, those foundations need to be examined and rebuilt. Papering over the cracks in the walls as they appear is no solution, and catastrophic collapse is inevitable.

TAKE A GOOD LOOK at this behaviour, for these are precisely the sort of people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a "policy".