Snel Caught Working by Metal Detectorist

A metal detecting coin collector enthuses:

"This is the first PACX coin of Snel to be recorded, filling in a gap in his career, which extends from Quatrefoil to Radiate Small Cross types!!!"

and this, purportedly is what makes artefact hunting and collecting, the clandestine and unreported trashing of so many assemblages of archaeological evidence in Britain and beyond, such "a good thing" according to the supporters of private pocket-fillng as long as they get sight of the better geegaws. Pathetic.

Now, Mr Crawford tell us more about "Snel" and his wife and kids, where did they live, what did they eat? What was their standard of living? How big was his family? Did Snel and his family have good health? I really would say there are a thousand and one questions we might have about Snel and his contemporaries and the community they lived in than a 'Snel Fecit' on a further reverse type can ever reveal the answer to. 

Trashing archaeological assemblages so that collectors can fill their pockets and a gap in their coin trays destroys evidence that others could use to fill gaps in our knowledge. While you're at it Mr Crawford, tell us pray, what - apart from for those with a 'train-spotting' or 'stamp collecting' approach - is so "important" about it being Snel and not Brythnoth or Spegan striking this PAX reverse?


Vignette: Coin responsibly reported and recorded by the PAS.

UK Metal Detectorists Melt Artefacts

"The Romans used to call lead
plumbumb hence the word plumber"

Tinopener (Mon Jul 14, 2014 10:43 pm)

On a metal detecting forum near you, there is a thread called "Why do we find so much scrap lead pieces on our fields?" and it makes pretty mind-boggling reading. The thread creator (one "Black Adder") starts off by giving a whole load of links to the use of themetal in antiquity and the more recent past. This makes clear that a lot of the lead present in fields is there s the result of human activity in the past. So what is the reaction of those who declare they are only interested in learning about the history? Take a look, look beyond the "good post M8" one-liner claqueurs at what the others say. Member "loud ed" (Tue Jan 04, 2011 9:56 pm) confesses he's taken:

molten lead by the bucketfull on some fields [...] take it all home give it a rinse and if its scrap and put it in a bucket and weigh it in at the end of the year

"Scottycooper" has a booze bucket (Tue Jan 04, 2011 10:17 pm)

All my lead is going into a bucket, just as the post above mentioned, as soon as I got 2 ton, im cashing it in, then im taking a week off work, going down the pub and drinking its wieght [sic] in booze!

"Shufly" (Tue Jan 04, 2011 10:24 pm) says:

I think its a good thing its non-ferrous, that means its worth more.. [emoticon]

Other members thank Blackadder for the information. "The Mole" (Wed Jan 05, 2011 7:38 am) struggles with the spelling to say:

excellent post b.a this will be very helpfull to the novice detectorist as no doubt like myself i have found lead in the field and just thought nothing of it, just thought it was scrap if anyone can add to this post with other things to look out for that us beginners might regard as scrap im sure it would make our learning curve that bit easier and we might not miss things through lack of knowlage top marks for that one ba [emoticon]

Member "Tekka" from Middlesbrough must be pretty dense (Tue Apr 10, 2012 10:13 pm)

Thanks BA. a new field we detected monday i was digging lots of lead that is white in colour, so i take it this means its been down there a while? i was getting a bit miffed at digging it and it never crossed my mind that it meant there has been activity in the area though we did wonder how so much got there.this now makes sense and the field a bit more intrsting [emoticon].

Glenfiddich (Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:02 pm) is enthusiastic:

a very well written editorial there Bruce so well done mate [emoticon] I like it [emoticon] on a recent dig down South a coupe of weeks ago I was with Paul AKA "Oldest Swinger" and he said something similar to your theory about finding lead as all I could do was moan every time I dug up the damned stuff but then Paul told me that it was actually a good sign as it meant that there was previous activity there on the very field that I was finding the stuff in and it has now made me think differently about things when I go detecting [emoticon][emoticon] Cheers Bruce [emoticon] its a good educational story [emoticon]

All those suggesting detectorists are learning about history might reflect on the meaning of this sort of comment found time and time again on the forums. Have a look at Saffron's folksy imagined "bit of history to add to the field" [reflect on what this guy knows about soldering].

It is worth reflecting too about one fundamental issue. If these artefacts are evidence of past activity, and the artefact hunters are removing that evidence from sites in order to put in their "booze buckets", what kind of record is being made of the evidence as it is taken away? What kind of recording has been taking place done by the airheads who did not even realise that they were removing evidence of past activity from a site? How many unaware (ignorant) airheads are there and how many responsible recorders are there in Britain's 16(?) thousand metal detectorists out there hoovering up buckets and buckets of historical metal artefacts, in many cases to sell off as 'scrap'? Why is it that after eighteen years of expensive PAS "outreach" there is still a place for posts like of Mr "Blackadder" giving information which comes as news to people like "Glenfiddich (joined forum Mon Oct 11, 2010)"? Just what have the PAS been up to in the area of educating artefact hunters and other finders about the significance of what they take out of the archaeological record?

TAKE A GOOD LOOK at this behaviour, for these are precisely the sort of people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a "policy".  

Vignette: Not really "interested in their history", liquidating collections of  non-ferrous historical artefacts, worth more like that. 
 

UK Seizure of Libyan statue

Derek Fincham has a piece " On that funerary statue seized in the UK" and includes a brief rundown of the legal background

The statue was seized after Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs said the statue was “misdeclared”. It was declared as a statue from Turkey, with an estimated value of $110,000. Yet HMRC alleged the statue originated from Cyrene, Libya and its value was closer to £1.5m. [...]Mr. Al Qassas and his witnesses did not appear to give evidence and to make themselves available for cross-examination. As a result, there was insufficient evidence to challenge HMRC’s argument that the State of Libya owned the statue.

A lawyer lobbying for the antiquities trade associations however justifies the practice of misdeclaration of exported antiquities by dealers:

Sometimes foreign sellers misdescribe imports because of fear of theft. It's not to avoid taxes because antiquities come in duty free.

But nobody was suggesting it was done to "avoid taxes". And I bet it's not really "sometimes".  I also think that taxation is not the problem the exporters and importers want to avoid by misdeclaring the contents of a sealed package or container. But anyway, by Mr Tompa's account, a lot needs to be done to stamp out theft by US postal workers and airport cargo staff.

Russia's air force bombs ISIL base near ancient city of Palmyra

Russian SU-25s on the way to hammering somebody

This has huge propaganda value for Russia, as well as making tactical sense. Has the battle for Palmyra begun, six months after the town fell to ISIL?

Russia’s air force has struck the area around the Islamic State-held (Isis) ancient city of Palmyra, the defence ministry has said, as Moscow continued its bombing campaign in Syria. “Su-25 jets hit a fortified Isis position in the Tadmur area of Homs province,” Moscow’s defence ministry said, using the Arabic name for Palmyra. “As a result of a direct strike, a fortification, an underground bunker and anti-aircraft artillery were destroyed.” Russia's air force bombs Isis base near ancient city of Palmyra

Several strikes are reported to have hit the city’s historic citadel. Russia did not reveal when the strikes took place, but said its jets had struck more than 237 targets in Syria over the past two days.

Agence France-Presse, "Russia's air force bombs Isis base near ancient city of Palmyra"  The Guardian  Monday 2 November 201

The Fate of Waleed Assad

It was apparently being reported by Lizzie Phelan (Russia Today's correspondent in Damascus) that Waleed, son of antiquities scholar Dr Khaled Assad was beheaded by ISIS. The report is FALSE, and due to the Russian journalist's poor grasp of punctuation.  She has ignored a request from me for clarification.

The "Green" Credentials of Hobby Lobby's Mr Green

"Decorative trophy tusks"

Mr Green of the "Museum of the Bible" has made himself deeply unpopular in the USA by the intrusive way in which he has been declaring his beliefs about how other people should conduct themselves and even how they should plan their families. Now he is coming in for some scrutiny for his own life choices, in buying antiquities and the company he keeps. Take this example of being photographed by one of his employees among what many would consider some excruciatingly bad taste home decor in Houston, spotted initially by Roberta Mazza.

Naughty Simba.

Mr Green has been depicted by Gary Vikan as "still learning" about the responsible collecting of antiquities when he met him. A museum of the Bible professionals twitter feed pictures him "still learning" about wildlife conservation. The public use of these images is surprising, coming hard on the heels of the "Cecil the Lion" furore and coverage of the Trump sons and their rifles. We trust that the the "decorative trophy tusks" are 1920s bakelite, and the disturbing "take me from behind Simba" shot with the "stuffed tiger trophy wine glass stand" and the "dead cheetah doorstop" are with fibreglass replicas. I wonder whether the collector was there considering getting a whole load of stuffed slaughtered animals to illustrate the conservative interpretation of the text of Genesis 1:26. Still one wonders whether there are any limits to this sort of insensitivity by the staff  and sponsors of this controversial "museum".

The older woman in the photo looks rather like Jan Duncan, widow of the controversial US hunter Dan Duncan. Surely the owner of this residence has a corner of the hall where there was an ormolu clock or a showy flower arrangement to act as a more acceptable backdrop to the posed photos. Or was the house stuffed full of slaughtered wildlife?

"There is no evidence" that these antiquities are fakes"

I include, with no extra comment, the link to David Knell's post ""There is no evidence" that these antiquities are fakes' Ancient Heritage, Friday, 30 October 2015. A number of us know collector David Knell to be very knowledgeable in his subject, his knowledge of a number of facets of the antiquities market in general, and trust his judgement. More than one collector has expressed their thanks to him, among other things, identifying problematic artefacts for them and for helping "remove fakes and fraud in the marketplace". David has recently highlighted some interesting parallels to some objects sold by antiquities dealer Antoine Karawani, a committee member of the Association of International Antiquities Dealers (AIAD). It seems Mr Karawani was not too pleased that his attributions of the items in question were queried, even though the Code of Conduct of the AIAD would suggest that members should welcome this sort of enquiring attention and deal with it promptly by making any necessary adjustments to the descriptions.  Mr Knell is awaiting information from Mr Karawani about the manner in which he reached his  attribution of the items he had recently in his stock. I must say he is not the only one who would be very interested in seeing what the dealer has to say on this matter.

I say "had" because Mr Karawaani's business seems to have had a high turnover since David wrote, after all as he said to Mr Google, "Our company is the leading antiquities gallery online". On that evidence, buyers seem to have a voracious appetite for the sort of things he sells. Thus we find that the Serapis "from the E. Morgan collection in London" has gone, as has the Bes, the Ordos camel "acquired on the London art market in the 1990s" likewise (there'a an "Ordos" ram though). I did not like that encolpion, it has an ugly patina and looks provincially "Bulgarian", but it seems to have attracted somebody's eye as it too has gone. The Luristan monkey amulet was a very unusual object, it is not surprising that a customer snapped that up right away - it was unavailable (sold?) hours after David Knell mentioned it, but never mind, it seems you can easily get copies of this type. As a Middle Eastern object, I wonder what the collecting history of Mr Karawany's example was. As for human representations, the statuette of Fortuna which does have a collecting history, though rather vague ("A German collection formed in the 1960s-1970s") has likewise vanished from the seller's website. Collectors interested in classical female deity figurines will likewise be disappointed that the statuette of Athena ("from an English private collection, acquired from a German collection of the 1960s") has also gone since David wrote about it. I would say far from being disgruntled with David pointing out some of the highlights of his stock, Mr Karawany should be thanking him for advertising them on his blog and leading to such quick sales

Anyway, let us hear more about how a dealer like Mr Karawany goes about attributing objects like this that come to him second or third hand from old collections and how he goes about maintaining to AIDA standards "full and accurate records of relevant sales and purchases" to allow the stated collecting histories to be verified as part of his clients' due diligence to avoid unwittingly buying dodgy objects. Over to Artemission.