Big-Endians and Little-Endians

Jonathan Swift

". . . It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present Majesty's grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs."

Swift's jibe against Protestant/Catholic animosity in Gulliver's Travels serves for any example of heated conflict over issues that others might find trivial. I think that the current conflicts between archaeologists and metal detectorists/collectors can be framed within this allusion. The egg, in this case, is the past, and the conflicts are over its treatment in the present.

Dick Stout's aptly named blog post "Reading Between the Lines..." contains a video which points to two rather illusory viewpoints: the first is that of some archaeologists about what drives metal detectorists, collectors and archaeologists, and the second is that of the detectorists who base their views of archaeology and archaeologists on what they hear in such conflict situations. If blame must be given, it must be heaped far higher on the archaeologist spokesmen of this viewpoint for the simple reason that it is archaeology's task to interpret past societies — a task far more difficult than interpreting present societies, so you would think that when an archaeologist starts to talk about collecting that person probably has least asked collectors a few questions about the activity.

There was confusion, on the video, between England and Wales' Portable Antiquity Scheme which is a voluntary reporting system for finds which organized what some people already did about reporting finds (usually to a museum or specialist) and the Treasure Act which replaced the old Treasure Trove laws and deals with what constitutes such "treasure"; public or private ownership, remunerations, etc.

An archaeologist's choice of religious terminology in saying that collecting is anathema to archaeology is telling, as is a statement where archaeological professional ethics are projected upon non-archaeologists. These are cult-clues. Many archaeologists know that a coin reference that they give in a report exists because of a collector's study.

Selling is equated with profit. This would seem very strange to a collector who frequently sells a poor example when a better one shows up. The sale might be to another collector, or a part trade to the dealer with the better example. Even the dealer is more frequently there for the lifestyle than the profit. An owner of a collectibles shop is a common media icon of the struggling small-businessman who won't give up because of the love for the subject. A metal detectorist said, defensively, that he has kept everything he found and never sells anything. I would be tempted to ask him if he also owns thirty-seven cats and tall piles of newspapers. Apparently, profit is a bad thing when applied to the archaeologically sacred.

The contrasts between archaeology as science and collecting and metal detecting as pleasure and profit are so ham-fisted that we can entertain only ignorance or condescension as an explanation for their use. A specialist collector might well know much more of the science concerning their collection than the average archaeologist who sees very little of such things. That is who you get to identify something for you. If you cannot find such a person, then contact a dealer who will have seen more than the average collector, though not as much as the specialist. The dealer's reputation and livelihood depends on such knowledge; the archaeologist might get refuted but won't lose any tenure over a mistake.

If you limit people's views of the past, and what is important or unimportant to that view, you limit the public's interest in the past. When the public does not care about something, it gets no funding. It does not matter which end of the egg you crack open, what is important is that the egg gets cracked open.