My Covering Letter to Deckers et al.

Sent on Sunday, just as the five posts went up

Dear Authors of ‘The complexitiesof MD policy and practice’,
Since there was little meaningful feedback from the letter I wrote earlier (23 June 2018 08:01), I have put up the response I mentioned earlier on my 'Portable Antiquities Collecting and Heritage Issues' blog and send the links. Although a single corresponding author at VUB is mentioned, you all individually put your names under the whole text, so I think it is only courteous to let each author responsible know this is in the public domain and afford the opportunity to reply (even if at least one of you is for some reason already blocking me on social media). There are four main parts, with an introduction:

Sunday, 8 July 2018  'The Complexities of Metal Detecting Policy and Practice' (Summary);

 'The Complexities of Metal Detecting Policy and Practice' (1) The Ixelles Three and their Problem ;

'The Complexities of Metal Detecting Policy and Practice' (2): The Ixelles Six and their Viewpoint ;'

The Complexities of Metal Detecting Policy and Practice' (3): The Ixelles Six - Unreasonably Opiniated ;

'The Complexities of Metal Detecting Policy and Practice' (4): Summing up the 'Contribution' of the Ixelles Six
 
I cannot really see what stood in the way of you addressing the main point Hardy made, which seems to me to be a fundamental issue to highlight and resolve before suggesting that any PAS, TTU, PAN, SUALT or whatever is achieving anything in the way of archaeological mitigation of knowledge theft due to Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record. 

Some of the points made in your text are also already mentioned in several other posts I have blogged earlier. For your reference they include: 

Monday, 25 June 2018 To One of the Authors of the Text-With-an-Overlong-Title

Monday, 25 June 2018 Ixelles Six: "Discouraging 'the Ignorant' from Forming an Opinion Opposite to Ours"

Tuesday, 26 June 2018 Ixelles scores an own goal? 

These two go together:Tuesday, 3 July 2018 Surface Sites Out of Sight of 'Transnational' Academics? Monday, 2 July 2018 'Could of Come From king Richerd's Horse ...\' Bosworth pillaged (bad grammar here of course ironic) 

Just for completeness’ sake, Heritage Action also mentioned your efforts Conservation shame, 07/07/2018 and here is my take on that:  Saturday, 7 July 2018 Heritage ActionClearing the Fog 

My guess is that most of you will ignore the points I made, as you did Hardy’s main substantive conclusion, so there will be no surprises there.  Should, however, you feel inclined to answer with some substantive arguments or points, as I state at the bottom of the uppermost (at the moment) post, all and any of you are perfectly welcome to send a public comment that I will publish on the blog. And please, just stop the blocking, what is it here that you cannot face discussing in its wider context? In what way are we not actually on the same side?
 I’ll be addressing at more length the points made in your Section five in a more formal context elsewhere in the next few weeks.
 Best wishes 
Paul Barford