Tale of Two Hoards

Heritage Action once again put facts into context - an activity the many (hundreds of?) supporters of private collecting of archaeological artefactsin Britain are all to obviously incapable of: 'PAS performs another round of the Darwinian quango survival dance!' 22/04/2017 ). They juxtapose the way the public are ionformed about two similar hoards of gold sovereigns: the 'piano hoard' and the 'Twinstead hoard' ( “Metal detector enthusiasts on a charity day ended up in a brawl after 300 sovereigns worth £75,000 were found in a field. They then ran off with the loot”).

Strange, isn’t it? In Bonkers Britain PAS garners oodles of news coverage from one hoard yet they (and the police) downplay mass theft of an extremely similar one. Such is the consequence of setting up a quango whose sole survival chances depend on pretending that buying a £10 ticket to a detecting rally transforms totally random people into “citizen archaeologists” with immaculate morals.

It is not so much strange - the PAS has always done precisely this sort of thing where their 'partners' are concerned - it is however a very serious scandal that the public are not being properly informed about portable antiquity issues by the 'scheme' set up to do precisely that and for twenty years have consistently been utterly failing to do so. The schemers are busily colluding to avoid informing their public properly and objectively about the downside of private collecting of historical artefacts.