Automatic Anti-Detecting Sentinels

Association of Detectorists  "We have been working to develop equipment to prevent illegal metal detecting. We have laboratory tested with a specialist company who design large scale transmitter equipment for the BBC, a metal detectors ability for the signal to be scrambled (under the appropriate bylaws), leaving the instrument inoperative around a protected site. We have also looked into developing, a low cost portable solution the could be used for when archaeologists leave site. Firstly, the site would have signs to say that any access is prohibited. The solar powered system first looks for movement on site and in waking-up with movement detected, it then looks for metal detecting and mobile phone signals. In determining signals and movement, it sounds an alarm and a flashing light and starts to film, recording to iCloud and sends text and email messages to designated contacts. Signage confirming that the site is monitored and alarmed with this equipment, should alone deter most, however, those who do look to go-ahead and start detecting, even if they looked to damage the equipment, the filming will have been recording to 'off site' and the contacts made aware".

Several versions of this type of Robocop have been mooted to thwart artefact hunters, none yet installed in use to protect any field.

In the case of the first, I'd be wary of flooding any area bigger than a dinner plate with electromagnetic radiation to scramble any electronic system and wonder what effect it would have on local wildlife and adjacent crops. Also, who is going to pay for it and why? Who will decide where they will be placed?

The sleeping candid cameras are not really very viable.. So what that you've got night-vision piccies of the men in action, if that gets you nowhere? How do you press charges on the basis of some blurry images of unidentified men doing 'something' in the hollow in the middle of the field 576m away? A portable unit flashing a beacon in the middle of a remote field when crooks are around is asking to get nicked. My bet is the night vision optics in it alone are worth quite a bit. Nice try, but what we need to do is to STOP collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record in any form. Or say goodbye to Britain's archaeological record.