Illegal Artefact Hunting in Poland (II): The "Pandora Paragraphs"

(Second instalment of a two-part article - part one here).
The appointment of a new head of the Historical Monuments Protection Service, Jarosław Sellin (title, Generalny Konserwator Zabytków - GKZ) in January 2022 brought a number of changes. Among them is a solution to Poland's problem with illegal and noisy metal detectorists. A new suite of legislation is currently going through the Polish parliament that might be referred to as the 'Pandora paragraphs'. This incorporates novel digital surveillance methods into the process of 'civilising' (as the Sellin puts it) the metal detectorists and cutting out criminality completely. 

The idea is simple. Having the intention to go out and search a particular property for historical objects with a metal detector, the artefact hunter needs to obtain the landowner's permission. Instead of first applying for a permit, the artefact hunter uses their mobile phone to register the search and supply the relevant personal details, time, extent.  This is done through an application - in fact an entire ICT system called a "Register of Searches" (RPsz). The idea of this system is that it "supports citizens involved in amateur searches for artefacts" but at the same time facilitates the authorities to receive this information about what is happening to these locations, and real time information about each artefact dug up. These have to be entered in real time to avoid charges of illegal appropriation of undocumented artefacts, should a police patrol do a spot check.

Another important feature is that this application is automatically linked to an updated digital map on some form of GIS platform that will contain information of the location and extent of several types of sites and monuments under protection under Poland's several laws (800 000 archaeological sites for example). Polish detectorists have often complained that this information is not easily available to them. Now there will be a dedicated resource to help them stay off these sites (in the register of monuments or included in the Sites and Monuments Record and within 10 meters from them, historical monuments, cultural parks, cemeteries, graves, war graves and places of execution, as well as monuments of extermination and their protection zones). According to the revised law, conducting metal detecting searches in these areas is a crime that exposes the culprit to a fine, restriction of liberty or imprisonment for up to 2 years). If the artefact hunter uses a phone to report detecting on or too near one of these sites, it will be detected by the conservation authorities (even if the searcher does not register a search there, the phone can be traced). Then the procedure can be initiated to punish this offence.   

The attraction for the artefact hunter is that this revision of the legislation eliminates any barriers to getting out in the field, spade in hand, as quickly as possible in the form of an administrative procedure. It allows the searcher to avoid all possible designated no-search areas.* Amateur searches can be conducted there only AFTER first reporting them via the application (non-reporting at the time of beginning the search is also an offence, and again phone records can be checked).

It is in the treatment of the reporting of found artefacts that this system provides the most possibilities for administrators and legislators. It is mandatory for all found objects to be immediately reported, at the moment of discovery, via the application all found objects that may reasonably be presumed to be historical or archaeological finds.** These records stored in the application will later be individually examined by the staff of the provincial conservator's office and declared to be historical artefacts worthy of preservation in a state collection, or artefacts that can be kept (or discarded) by the finder and landowner (or treated as lost property under the regulations regarding this). The staff of the regional conservation offices will have six working days to prepare written feedback (in the form of an administrative decision) on each of the reported artefacts and instructions on further actions.

Obviously present staffing levels in the regional offices run b local government are insufficient for such a process if there are (as the creators of the application assess) 100 000 metal detectorists in Poland. These offices are therefore obliged by this new law to employ more archaeologists to fulfil this role. Rather like Britain's Portable Antiquities Scheme. The latter costs 1.5 million pounds for basic running costs alone, while local government picks up the bill for office space and staff salaries, and eventual expenses if staff have to go into the field. It is estimated (Mike Lewis pers. comm.) that each record in the database costs 30GBP to create, maintain and store. So the Polish government is being very generous with public funds to uphold archaeology. At last. I suppose it is not out of the question that as the database gets bigger, metal detectorists will have to pay some kind of a fee to support its operation. 

Another benefit is that by making use of the application for all people using a metal detector on land, this application immediately creates a full database of the personal data of all metal detectorists in Poland, in addition one linked to a particular phone. These are the new technologies that can be used to keep track of citizens' activities. The application gives law enforcement an ideal tool for detecting and at the same time evidence gathering on cultural property crime. Any seller in a market selling artefacts from metal detecting can be challenged to show a passing police patrol that each artefact on their stall  is on the RPsz database as having been reported and then disclaimed by the state. After 1st May 2024 when this law comes in, any objects not there are by definition of the new law illegal and the seller can be detained on the spot. In the same way, three guys in camo lurking in a forest glade with metal detectors (perhaps located with the aid of phone data) will either be able to show that the search area was previously reported, and all the artefacts in their finds pouches are already in the RPsz database, or again it is arrest on the spot. In the same way, a search of a detectorists house will be speeded up by asking the collector to demonstrate the items they have stored there were excavated before the new law came in (in which case they can show the permits)  and those that were dug subsequently, so should be in the application's database.

All in all therefore, this seems like an interesting resolution of the metal detectorist problem and if used properly a pretty effective way of  'civilising' the milieu - and locking up not a few of the more persistent offenders. 

 

* This nanny state resolution however still does not absolve would-be artefact hunters from the obligation to check the status of the land they intend to search as the database will not contain any information on restrictions arising from other regulations (such as environment-protection laws or information on chemical hazards etc).

** this is a key problem that will have to be resolved. Many Polish artefact hunters question the notion of "archaeological find" in the case of, for example, remains from WW2. They say they are not archaeological material, and so if they go out looking for it, they should not have to register their search. This requires separate documents from the MKiDN establishing with firm guidelines what is and what is not "potentially archaeological material", as this question is crucial to the whole working of the new system. This should not only include metal objects but also worked lithic material and ceramics. It should not be left to the amateur to select out from the material collected in an amateur search what they "think" is "not worth reporting".