Monday 30 September 2019

Typical Pay-to-Take Erosion


Make no mistake what this is about
Facebook, just a mouse click away for supporters of collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record. Just one typical day 'somewhere in Wiltshire', but it's happening up and down the country, week after week, year after year (John Maloney 16 September at 21:51 writes): 
So a farmer from Wiltshire contacted me about organising a dig. He had 85 acres of cultivated mud available to us.
Parking was on headlands.
£20 per person.
Detecting 9.00am till 6.00pm.
Porta Loo on site.
6 scrap buckets across the field.
62 folk turned up, Farmer collected £1240.
Final "finds" score
16 Durotriges units
18 Bronze roman, 2 Denari.
1 Ethelred penny, pierced and gilded (Treasure)
1 1700`s Silver posy ring (Possible Treasure)
32 various Medieval hammered.
Lots of Trade tokens, jettons, Victorian and Edwardian pennys etc.
Horse harness pendant, belt mounts, spur rowel and all kinds of "bits" !
2 x 42 litre buckets full of "rammel" !
All the holes were filled and the scrap put in the bins, must have been a good day had to chase the stragglers off the field!!
For the uninitiated, "rammel" [Origin: Nottingham. "Thats a load of rammel" - "That's a load of crap".] One man's rammel could include another man's archaeological material.

That's 68+ recordable finds - note how it is mostly coins and tokens that notice was taken of, how many artefacts (archaeological material) were discarded by people only wanting to augment their coin collection? That is more than one each (including 2 Treasure) in nine hours detecting, and they cost the artefact hunter a bit less than £20 each one. In other words, each of them was sold for that sum by the farmer. No mention of PAS present.

What is interesting is that the farmer got all the money, the rally organiser is claiming he got none (so he'll not have to pay tax on it, will he?) and did all that organising work for free for the love of the hobby and the loot. So, who paid for the portaloo?

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