[Not going to be] Debating Collection-Driven Exploitation of the Archaeological Record with the Ixelles Six

Helsinki pissing

I have just had a condescending letter from a person claiming to speak on behalf of the Ixelles Six who attempted to trash Sam Hardy's research on the scale of non-recording by 'metal detectorists'. On their behalf he says they all refuse to discuss the issues I raise in my comments. I have asked for permission to post their letter to me online as a matter of public record. They should allow that and you can see what they wrote.

Instead of replying to the issues I raise with the tactics they use to Hardy's conclusions are wrong, and agenda-driven 'never mind the damage look at the benefits', they say in their letter to me:

We would welcome a response to our article in a scholarly forum, and we hope Sam Hardy, or someone else, writes a reasoned article to develop discussion.

I would suggest that one may perfectly reasonably conclude that developing the discussion in the direction Sam Hardy and myself were going is the last thing wanted by these representatives of projects such as MEDEA, DIME, PAN, SuALT etc. I think they are expecting a different kind of incestuous academic back-slapping response from other SuAlt project members perhaps. I am not sure whether they really will 'welcome' the conclusions of other writers with whom I have already discussed their efforts. Adjectives such as 'lazy', 'shoddy', 'patronising' tended to dominate. We can only find other adjectives in the dark side of the blogosphere belonging to the collectors who are delighted that they have 

impressively demolished [Dr] Sam Hardy’s anti-metal detecting Research Paper. 

It seems that the Ixelles Six, the PAS and the collection-driven exploiters of the archaeological record are more deeply in this together than they ever have been before.
They have now all firmly pinned their colours to the notion that Dr Hardy cannot possibly be right. And if the scholarly forum agrees that it is they who are wrong...? What then for the further funding of the PAS and the future of 'responsible' artefact hunting in the UK?