Stonehenge 181
Image by Chance

SL, I pressed the wrong buttons and I think the Eds tidied up but both my posting and your reply got lost. My point was that there is a third group, the 60% that don't report. I take your point about you buyng the stuff, it probably doesn't stimulate nighthawking or non-recording much. The high value transactions do of course. Renfrew said collectors are the real looters and it's got to be right.

Yes, it's true about collectors. I collect prehistoric stones - nobody sees them but I. The objects lose their relevence when they are removed from their findspots. There's a flood of stuff being found and I prefer the decayed jewelry. I've wrecked a couple of medieval rings accidentally but have mainly conserved the items - they take ages to clean. There is yet another category and that's odd stuff being sold as metal-detected. I don't know where that comes from but it's certainly not the ground!