Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues: Bardney Area Siliqua Hoard Forum Thread Censored by Facadists

Wednesday, 17 October 2018

Bardney Area Siliqua Hoard Forum Thread Censored by Facadists

To maintain the 'responsible detecting - never done wrong' facade of UK artefact hunting takes a lot of work. You see, artefact hunting there in general is not being done in any way that can actually be regarded as 'responsible', and it is difficult to make a sow's ear somehow look like a silk purse. But M.Rix listowner of a metal detecting forum near you is having a go, by deleting some of the posts I referred to in my own report on what I saw there about a siliqua hoard before he began deleting his own members' honest words:

Re: Hoard! Update 12/10/18 - A few more! Post by mrix » Wed Oct 17, 2018 9:01 pm

jcmaloney wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:43 pm So a post about the consequences of doing things "wrong" gets removed.......... yet one advising "get a ditching bucket" stays?? Don`t know why I bother at times.
I am not sure if you have heard the expression all publicity is good publicity, all posts related to anti metal detecting blogs will be removed here at the MDF as its only creating far more awareness for these sites and simply promoting them [emoticon] [emoticon] To be honest I am a little shocked you posted a link to one of these blogs [emoticon] [emoticon]

Despite what chattering monkeys may assert, this blog is not an 'anti metal detecting blog', its name is Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues, and it discusses Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record as a heritage issue. One would have thought that responsible artefact hunters would be reflecting on precisely the same kind ofissues raised here. Of course, they would not if the term 'RD' was just a facade, intended to fob off as much critical comment of IRresponsible behaviour for as long as possible. What in fact this 'site' is creating awareness of is the gap between what some people say about UK artefact hunting and what artefact hunters actually do and try to hide from the rest of us. No amount of internal censorship in the artefact hunting community will alter the fact of that huge gap. Tekkies may pretend to themselves that there is no gap, the world is flat and pigs will fly. the rest of us can see that delusion for what it actually is.

I think there is also an element of Animal Farm here isn't there? M.Rix feels he can visit this blog and remain untarnished by the experience (like the pigs in Mr Jones' house), but the lesser mortals under him (like the sheep) cannot be allowed to even know there is something here and must be kept away as much as possible. Orwell would be disturbed by Mr Rix's attempts to censor what his flock read, by his lack of trust in their ability to sort out by referring to many sources of opinion, what really IS a 'responsible' approach to the archaeological record, and what is primarily just selfish greed and ignorance.