It's the nighthawks, innit?

  

     If you can't see it...   

Reader's tip:

"Hi Paul, Digging for Britain episode 5 of 6, about 35 mins in there is discussion of a site on Salisbury Plain I think you’ll find appropriate material for the blog. They justify digging the site due to ‘news getting out’ after a commercial geophysics survey. They then go on to say how nighthawks trash sites but can’t bring themselves to recognise the same problems are there with legal detecting. It was on BBC2 so will be on iplayer after broadcast (Ends 9pm). The whole series has been quite, well different, no detected finds, no PAS, refreshingly conspicuous in their absence ".

Sadly, if I try to register (date of birth "so we can tailor adverts just for you" - stuff that) I can only get this: “BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues”. So I expect we'll all be able to read all about when it is taken up by a British archaeoblogger. No?

Visiting the programme's webpage we read:

"Alice visits a Ministry of Defence dig on the chalky downs of Salisbury plain. A team of ex-servicemen working with Operation Nightingale, a charity that helps ex-servicemen and women suffering with PTSD, dig down to save an astonishing early Anglo-Saxon burial site from treasure hunters. A single large grave is surrounded by smaller graves, all revealing beads, combs, knives, rings and even a spear. Lead archaeologist Richard Osgood brings the best of the finds into the Digging for Britain tent to show Alice what they tell us about Anglo-Saxon migration".

Oh. What do we learn about the process of "migration", specifically? Is this not rather nationalist-sounding archaeology? I assume this site, "Barrow Clump" is what's in question. Yes indeed, any site with a name like that is going to be targeted by artefact hunters. That's how they work, after all. Targeting known sites is more common than their supporters will suggest.