Last night the counter showed a certain number of objects in the database at midnight Friday 31st Dec 2021. At (Polish) six in the morning, Saturday 1st January 2022, it had two more (LANCUM-F9B3DA, BERK-F9A2DB) Why were FLOs were still working late into the night on New Year's Eve to boost the record numbers, and were they doing it for the benefit of the PAS or their own recording institution?
As we've seen, the PAS managed to make 32098 or maybe 29422 records of public finds, which is substantial drop from the c. 80 000 they were managing before Covid. In pre-Covid years (according to HA figures) that would be 80k out of an estimated 810000 recordable items pulled out of the ground and pocketed by 27000 artefact hunters. We do not know how many artefact hunters actually did stay indoors during the UK's lockdown in 2021, there are a number of public records (including items offered for sale with the date of discovery given) that indicate it was not universal. The commercial rallies did not take place (but few finds are reported from them anyway).
Interestingly, although three coins were recorded (by two FLOs and one public recorder) on the previous day the Gloucester FLO made five records on 30th December 2021, nobody is currently shown by the Database daily statistics to have been working on 31st December (which is not a holiday in the UK). This makes the appearance of two records made at midnight, or very early the next day (which is a bank holiday in the UK) very odd. But, hey... PAS - stranger things have happened.
2 comments:
"WE do not know how many artefact hunters actually dis stay indoors during the UK's lockdown" ...
I think we have a good idea that a lot didn't. There's a press story that there were a big number of "garden finds" during lockdown but a moment's reflection will suggest that the detectorist isn't born who didn't give his garden a good going over to the point of depletion when he first bought a machine. So I think it's pretty obvious there must have been a lot of laundering by findspot relocation going on by those who had been ignoring lockdown. I'm sure PAS will readily agree. Not.
More whitewashing of what's going on:
"But the Government announced in December that a new definition would be introduced to protect treasure from being lost to the public."
It's not "the public", it's greedy, graceless oiks. Why imply otherwise?
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