 |
"I've been waiting 25 years to find it."
This is the third bearded head Bodvoc silver unit
to be discovered. Dean took this photo when it came out of the ground recently |
"This was about the time that the Internet forum had come come into fashion. Remember the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) forum? We all aired our views, only to to have them heavily moderated in the anti metal-detecting way by the forum administrator who was their appointed online PAS representative. Two anti metal detecting/collecting members were given free rein whilst people like me, who promoted recording, were strongly moderated. All of my communications were summarily dismissed and I was told to stop scaremongering, as this might put off PAS recorders
"My opinion was that you will lose them anyway, especially the more important ones, if you do not communicate and do not do things properly. I could go into the details, but there is little point. It is a shame that they are not better managed.
"I think that my Finds Liaison Officer (FLO) knew that the the system would not listen to her, either, so she drifted away from me. It was a new system of land management that was perfect for the ignorant ways of the "old-school archaeologists": farmers were being effectively controlled by the archaeologists, thus they also controlled the detectorists. It could have been overcome if they had listened to my suggestions — Why stop a recording detectorist? Why not encourage such a person? More importantly, why try to silence me after all I had done for the PAS and our history?
"None of the seventy two rural sites I recorded have been excavated. There is no funding to do so, anyway. I think that our local archaeology department has received cuts up to 60% in recent years with many people losing their jobs. The only time that a site is investigated is when a developer pays for it, or when it is excavated by amateur archaeologists [I spoke on the construction of archaeological expert systems at the 1999 meeting of the Council for Independent Archaeology at Sheffield, and was shown the report of such an excavation. It was much more than the archaeology reports you usually see: In book-form it was a work of art in itself, beautifully written with excellent drawings of all of the finds. It was of the fine quality one finds mostly in nineteenth and early twentieth century books. J.H.]
"The big worry for detectorists at the moment is "green waste". The mulchings from recycling companies tipped onto fields. Millions of tonnes of it is being spread on our fields, supposedly biodegradable, but also full of chewed up pieces of metal, anything which is non-magnetic as it escaped those filters, such as aluminium, screws, circuit-board pieces etc. We, as detectorists cannot search many of our fields any more as they are so contaminated that the detector does not work. Natural England do not seem to care about this. It is mainly only the the detectorist who complains, so why would they care?Have an environmentally friendly weekend, more in this series on Monday.
John's Coydog Community page
Dick Stout provided a link to your site and encouraged people to participate. There is quite a difference between detecting in the U.S. and England. A main difference is that ,as for public property ,we as citizens feel that we are the owners of that property and our fight is to keep that public land in our hands. The right to detect that property is being lost often because of the way people detect it.
ReplyDeleteThere are no standards in regards to public property that are the norm therefore any group that says they represent the detecting community is not really doing so. If these groups that say they represent us would first find out and publish what type of detecting they claim to represent they might get some support.
Unless the detecting community ( or enough of them ) can come together and agree on what proper detecting is, no one can represent them. This will require confronting and asking questions of detectorists on various social sites. When those discussions are not encouraged or if they are stopped we can not move forward.
Thanks for commenting, Gary. Not being a detectorist, myself, I can't answer to the differences. I wonder if there are many people who have detected in the U.S. and England, both?
ReplyDeleteBest,
John
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeletePlease disregard if this comment made it through earlier.
DeleteI don't know if many have but I have heard of people from here detecting there. There is a group from California Metal Detecting Forum that goes and I've heard of some on youtube and detecting forums. What they seem to enjoy is the opportunity for finds that are older than we have here. I have not seen them complain about the laws on detecting there.
Thanks, Gary,. Hopefully we will get some responses from England, tomorrow.
DeleteBest,
John
The words from this post that struck me immediately were: "...farmers were being effectively controlled by the archaeologists, thus they also controlled the detectorists." While cultural property and ownership laws in Britain and the U.S. differ in several regards, the crux of each seems to me a struggle for control that surges and subsides with varying degrees of indignation and self-righteousness on both sides. Control of farmers in Britain may be compared with control of bureaucracy in the U.S. with similar ambitions and consequences. Rarely do the broader interests of society, as reflected in pragmatic views, dominate the philosophical and political agendas. In the U.S., recent decades have been marked by extralegal bureaucratic measures of control while Britain led the world in pragmatic administration of its national cultural resource. Is that paradigm now shifting, perhaps subtly but measurably? If so, where does the future lie for independent scholars—whether professional or amateur? One may be reminded of the medieval Cloisters where ownership and thought were repressed in equal measure.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Wayne, There will be more on these topics in tomorrow's post!
DeleteBest,
John
It's not just detectorists who care about 'green waste', there is also stong archaeological concern particulalry with regard to its impact on some kinds of geophysics. There is a recent paper:
ReplyDeleteJames Gerrard, Liz Caldwell andAlisa Kennedy Green Waste and Archaeological Geophysics
Archaeological Prospection Volume 22, Issue 2, pages 139–142, April/June 2015
That is good to know, Craig, and thank you for bringing it to our attention.
DeleteBest,
John