What Polish Politicians Are Missing, Changing the Law on "Protection" of Archaeological Record by Metal Detecting it Away

In a discussion of proposed new artefact-centred laws on artefact hunting that threaten the integrity of the Polish archaeological record, a radio interview with one of its authors, metal detectorist Jacek Wielgus, has been published that makes interesting listening if you speeky-the-Polish (Ireneusz Prochera rozmaia z Jackiem Wielgusem "o ustawie ułatwiającej życie poszukiwaczom-amatorom" 28.07.2023). 

"Our law, our application is not particularly innovative, we have based it on different countries, Scandinavia, the present Benelux countries, we directly based it on the example from Belgium (sic), there is a special application on which are marked all the places where it is not allowed to go, where you should not go, there is the buffer zone of two metres from an archaeological site, we made ten, with regard to distortions in the GPS, on the telephones. And then we will know where we can go and where we can't, where there are archaeological sites. Moreover, in this application, we will be able to take photos and in fact in real time send to the archaeologist on duty (sic) photos of what we've found and he (sic) will know if what we've found is an archaeological find or not, and the archaeologist on duty (sic) will be able at once to advise "dear colleague (sic) please stop searching there, because here, probably, is an archaeological site, yes? Or he can mark on the photos (sic) that it is nothing, nothing that could interest the conservation services, and we can further continue our searching." 

This is so garbled, and inconsistent with the actual content of the law that is passing through Polish parliamentary system. In the justification of that, the authors claim to be basing their system on the Danish DIME. Here it is unclear why Belgium is mentioned, in Belgium, artefact hunting is only legally undertaken with a permit, like in Poland.  I suspect he means Flanders where there is an online recording scheme MEDEA . 

I'd like to draw attention to a glaring problem with the underlying idea. If there are "100 000 detectorists" in Poland, and on a fine day in June, just half of them decide to spend Saturday afternoon in the countryside and "Register" their intent and start posting photos of what they've found... where are those "archaeologists on duty" going to come from, and who pays for their overtime on a Saturday? More, many artefact hunters in Poland (Wielgus himself admits earlier in this interview) go out at night... are archaeologists goind to sit watching the application at night, and indeed what will they be able to see of the site explored without a night-vision camera on the smartphone? If there is a group of four detecting buddies exploring (exploiting) a site and each of them is in a different area of the forest or field and moving about at random, and posting photos of what they are doing, how is the "archaeologist on duty" going to interpret the distribution and significance of the finds (objects found) in real time? How are they to assess whether this is an archaeological site, or a ploughed out and then overgrown manuring spread? And then if they actually are watching 3100 weekend searches in real time, simultaneously (50 000 tekkies, 16 local WKZ offices) how will they cope? Or rather by how many extra staff would each local office have to be expanded to keep this up all year round? How much would this cost, and would the cost be met by a central budget or local taxpayers?

The definition of a site by the criterion of "three artefacts in a 100 square metres" is simply dotty. What is an "artefact" anyway? If we find a piece of brick with adhering mortar, a piece of roofing slate and an iron window latch in a molehill in the middle of a flattened area on a gentle hillslope covered in pasture - in the eyes of the "investigating" metal detectorist is that one artefact or three? To my eye, it would suggest that there possible was a building there, with the potential of preserved stratigraphy. Would the |"archaeologist on duty" see the flat area in a phone-taken shot in poor light, and would the detectorist show the rubble as well as the metal latch? If they do not, the new law provides no requirement for them to do so, as it allows them to claim ignorance ("I did not think it was anything important/would interest the conservation services"). If they don't show the archaeologist on duty all the information needed, all they have to do is move 11m along the hillside to the next humpy-and-bumpy area and search there and find some more stuff without invoking the "leave it alone" clause.

So, Mr Wielgus and tekkie mates, how do you propose Polish archaeologists would go about determining if there was an archaeological site (or indeed, what is "an archaeological site") here, Tadmarton, Nr Banbury Oxfordshire (yes, I chose the spot deliberately). What would a remote archaeologist on duty see through the screen of a phone? 

I do think there is an onus on colleagues who play about with "data" from metal detecting to present the results in such a way that the context of what they are doing is better seen by all, including outside observers. If MEDEA is guilty of presenting to foreign history seekers and lawmakers a misleading picture of what the archaeological record is, and what archaeology (not artefactology) is, and how we preserve the archaeological record from being dismembered as a source of collectable trophy finds, then that surely is against professional ethics. Can MEDEA show where they have faced that responsibility?