local tv: metal detectorists vs archaeologists lock

close
more_vert
Littlestone L
Littlestone May 30, 2007 20:10:30
Replying to Rhiannon

Is it not our search for knowledge, and the understanding knowledge gives us about ourselves and our history, that should guide us here? And is it not the case that sensible and caring people will not want to see any aspect of our history damaged or lost through irresponsible practices? Surely it is as much a crime against our search for knowledge to let a burial site and it's contents be lost forever through neglect as it is to rip it apart in the name of archaeological investigation. And is it not as much a crime to remove from a field a broach or a coin without proper records as it is to let that broach or coin disappear from the store of human knowledge because no-one has the time or the money to go out and find it?

Seems to me that what we're really arguing about is not whether people should or should not uncover more of our history it is whether, in the process of uncovering that history, more of the history is lost than saved. Responsible people, whether archaeologist, conservator or detectorist, know full-well that it's not just the object that is important, it's everything associated with it that is of equal or greater value (in terms of knowledge that is). We can bang each other's heads against the wall until the end of time but if we accept that what is of real value is knowledge and understanding about ourselves and our history then surely it shouldn't be too difficult to find a way to pull in the same direction.

From Beowulf: In the gloom the gold gathers the light against it. The light here, perhaps, is not the cheep light of glittering metal but the brighter light of knowledge.

L Littlestone
Littlestone May 30, 2007 22:01:15
Replying to Littlestone

Apologies for the spelling mistakes. For broach please read brooch, for cheep please read cheap; and for anything else please read whatever has meaning for you.

Sigh...

The Old Man leaves his Road to those
Who love it no less since it lost purpose,

Who never ask what History is up to,
So cannot act as if they knew:

W H Auden

P Paul Barford
Paul Barford May 31, 2007 05:42:09
Replying to Littlestone

Absolutely Littlestone. But surely what is the fundamental issue is this of collecting.

Is it really increasing human, my, your, the public's, knowledge about the past that Joe Boggins (made up name) has in his back bedroom a collection of (among other things) dozens, nay hundreds of brooches taken from a variety of Roman and Anglo Saxon sites within driving distance of his home, and also those he found on rallies in Yorkshires and Suffolk? He may even have a little notebook which records roughly where each one was found. Some may even be recorded with the PAS with six-figure NGRs. But what happens to that collection (and the notebook) when Boggins passes on to the "great detecting fields in the sky"? Nobody has attempted to answer the question where are those nine million objects and the information they once contained? What about the nine million little holes in the archaeology of countless archaeological assemblages all over the country? That information is lost forever. We hear glib assertions (including from Minister Lammy) that all these collections are to the "public good" but it seems to me that all the arguments about this are pretty spurious once you start to look at them more carefully. Especially in the context of the very real problems and very serious damage that worldwide collection of archaeological artefacts is causing to the archaeological resource. Of course that is precisely the context in which the "pro-artefact hunting (detecting)" lobby will NOT want you to invite people to look at it.

Apart from Joe Boggins' back bedroom, Roman brooches and coins metal detected unrecorded in many cases from archaeological sites in Britain can be bought on ebay to be collected by Japanese teens or by Connecticut hillbillies and Ohio rednecks. Fine, nice for them, but this raises the fundamental question whether the keeping of contextless objects as seried collectables scattered between thousands of ephemeral personal collections all over the world a good way to be curating the archaeological record?