Rail against the chap like that and the next time he'll just think "fuck you, I'm keeping this lot!"
Yes, I take your point, and its what detectorists say constantly. On the other hand, 80% of them say "fuck you, I'm keeping this lot!" despite the fact that for exactly ten years now we have been paying many hundreds of pounds per head to educate them not to.
As the sainted Tony Robinson says -
"'To be honest, I think we're pissing about. The reality, according to Phil, is that there are likely to be no metal finds at all in the first foot of Britain's soil within 20 years. The only way we can prevent that happening is by legislation. I think all metal detectors should be licensed and to get a licence they should be required to abide by a code of archaeological best practice.'
'Everything we find, wherever it is, should be scrupulously and systematically recorded within its archaeological context,' The Portable Antiquities Scheme is 'great, and I support the people who do it, but in a way it's a policy of despair because it's saying yes, all these people are going to plunder our archaeology but what we'll do is try to persuade the nice ones to tell us where they found it.'
Me, I've put more effort into trying to persuade them over the past three years than anyone I know and the progress has been zilch. My judgement is that the 80% have fully heard the message but are ineducable oiks who don't want to be arsed. I therefore no longer want to subscribe to the "bridgebuilding" mantra that the bad guys buy time with and the government hides behind to cover their lack of legislative balls. I'd like the one million unscheduled and unprotected sites in England to be as well protected as the ones in Northern Ireland, Eire and France and for there to be no metal detecting that isn't licensed by the dept of the Environment. Tough on the responsible detectorists but unavoidable if another 4 million artefacts aren't going to be spirited away without a word in the next decade. Its tough on responsible egg collectors and lilly collectors that those activities are no longer allowed but its damn good for the eggs and lillies.
