'Metal Detecting' (sic) 'Policy' (sic) in Bonkers Britain, not 'Complex' (sic) at all

The Axis of Ixelles (PMB)

Back in Bonkers Britain, there still seems to be confusion on what the public debate over Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record is all about. Here's my reply to one of a series of emails from Bloomsbury precipitated by my four posts (see below, Sunday 8th July) critiquing what the Ixelles Six wrote in Open Archaeology 2016 [2018] vol 2 issue 1:

Mike Lewis wrote:We are advocating a system whereby detectorists take more responsibility for their actions through education, but (as you are aware) it is a long road… You seem to fail to recognise that detecting is a broad church, with some very conscientious individuals, and others that are crooks (a bit like society in general really). 

Spoken like a true ‘non-professional metal detectorist’, that’s what they all say – so it’s by no means the first time anyone has heard that particular, but irrelevant,  ’argument’. Please save it for the compliant converted.

You (plural) seem to fail to recognize Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record is damaging exploitation whether or not done with criminal intent. That is the point Hardy was making that you (plural) missed in your ‘response’.

What else you (plural) missed in the Hardy’s text was the bit that really makes your implausibe ‘long road of education’ look positively futile. After twenty years of your ‘advocation’, Hardy says and you – plural -  fail to note or refute, perhaps ”2,079,394 (96.13% of) recordable objects are not reported”. You would call that 96.13 percent “zero gain” (p. 324). The rest of us would say that is PAS-fluffy talk for 96.13% knowledge theft by “non-professional metal detectorists”. That is the whole point of my four-post critique of what the six of you produced. To pretend you did not see that is either simply carelessness or intellectual dishonesty. Which is it?

By how much would Hardy have had to be wrong on this to make the whole defence (your – plural – whole section five pp. 328-330) by people representing four foreign universities  and two official bodies of this ‘liberal approach’ to Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record look anything but utterly Utopian, disconnected with reality and ridiculous?  This is not a “complexity”, it is shutting your (plural) academic eyes and ears to information that does not fit a pre-supposed model.

Paul