Wednesday 15 March 2023

Finds Recording "One of the Greatest Innovations in World Archaeology"



I was struck by a particularly inane comment on social media from an anonymous account calling itself "Big Heritage" and apparently based in the Chester/Liverpool area in England ("Big ideas for connecting people to the past. Our sites include: @westapproaches , @sicktodeathuk, @discoverdeva, @museumwrens, @howtofixauboat"). In their opinion:

Big Heritage @Big_Heritage 12 mar
W odpowiedzi do @Big_Heritage @spmaslin i 3 innych użytkowników
The PAS is up there with stratigraphic recording as one of the greatest innovations in archaeology.
 Complete bollocks. Do they teach history of archaeology in British universities that this numpty has such a narrow horizon? The recording of accidental finds made by members of the public was instituted in central Europe, in the years around the First World War, so it is hardly any kind of "innovation" when the Brits finally get around to setting up a (pathetically inadequate) "Scheme" to do that in the 1990s, at the same time as the (failed and now dismantled) Florida 'Isolated Finds program' in place between 1994-2005.

It is no "innovation" to have allowed artefact hunting and collecting (called looting in most other countries) to expand to the degree that it has in Britain's crowded land under the (utter) pretence that "responsible reporting" is mitigating the information loss. It absolutely is not, British archaeologists who think this is what is happening (if not simply culpably ignorant) are clearly misleading themselves and the public that they are accountable to. There is no innovation in that.

2 comments:

Brian Mattick said...

The tweet has been deleted.

Paul Barford said...

So it has ("Wygląda na to, że taka strona nie istnieje. Spróbuj wyszukać coś innego"). What is the point of using social media to make superficial and ill-considered statements that you're not able or willing to defend if somebody challenges them? Maybe first get your ideas straight in your head before telling others what's what.

 
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