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| Archaeological Record ( Historic Cornwall ) |
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| The elephant in the room |
Systematic metal detector surveys are increasingly being undertaken on archaeological investigations although their use is still relatively low and is confined largely to the south and east. This paper will briefly review metal detector surveys on developer-funded survey and excavation projects using the evidence of recent fieldwork together with the research and analysis of metal detector surveys undertaken by the Roman Rural Settlement Project.
The presenter has basically taken the collaborative work 'The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain' (2016) and from it obtained information about (it seems), where metal detector use is taking place on commercial excavations. I must admit to feeling at a bit of a loss here. I work in Poland where metal detectors have been part of the archaeological toolkit since the 1990s - both in surveys as well as in excavations. I wrote critically [in Polish I suspect] on the way in which they were used in the latter back in the 1990s, if you please. So what's this about?
Dr Bryant seems to be saying that there are more metal finds and coins the larger area you dig, and that if you use a metal detector... He shows that the size of commercial excavations across the country varies. He then argues that because sites in the north and west tend to be smaller than in the 'Home Counties', there are fewer metal objects from them, and so - he argues - the significance of the ones that are found is greater than further south and west. A slide explains the 'impact of metal detector surveys on the recovery of coins' , and he notes that of all excavated Roman rural sites coins were found at only 44% of them (!) - but on 297 sites (8%), metal detector surveys had been carried out and of these 261 (88%) had produced coins (I suspect he means irrespective of its area)."The question [of] responsible detectorists of "where to detect" could be answered by 'in the north and west' where the relative archaeological significance of Roman metalwork recovered is arguably the highest"
It is not clear what this means. Does he mean these "responsible detectorists" should be knocking at the doors of all the commercial archaeology units and firms, museums and conservation bodies offering their services and references, so they can take part in archaeological projects? I hope that is what is meant. It is not clear however. He could also be saying that in collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record, targeting Roman sites in the north and west would lead to the recovery (and responsible recording) of lots more loose pieces of "relatively significant" Roman metalwork. The problems with this are (a) the sites would be depleted of those items before they could be excavated, (b) a great many sites in this area are presently under upland pasture where the Code of Best Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales (2017) prevents the responsible detectorist from hoiking objects out of the archaeological record, (c) many sites in these areas are sensitive to disturbance, and (d) if the metal objects in them are relatively significant on a national scale, should they be being decontextualised and disappearing into the hands and pockets of collectors anyway?Ten years ago: Monday, 29 March 2010 "Archaeological collection discovered after relic hunter’s death"
This article from Prague Radio of January 2008 seems worth posting here as an example of the size of some of the collections built by metal detectorists. Note that the photos show only relatively large pieces or nearly complete objects, this is obviously a selection of the sort of things that the detectorist was digging up. The rest was presumably deemed "uncollectable" and discarded - despite the fact that they too were archaeological finds. Once again note that there is no information about provenance preserved in this collection.
Listen to the radio broadcast here.
When a young man died in his Prague apartment two years ago after a cigarette set his bed on fire, the firemen who came to help made an unusual discovery. The man’s one-bedroom apartment was chock-full of strange-looking metal objects, obviously from prehistoric times. As the amateur archaeologist had no relatives, experts from the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Archaeological Institute were asked to go through more than 3000 items which would be worth millions on the black market. Miroslav Dobeš of the Archaeological Institute explains what some of the most precious pieces are.I cannot quite see how you'd ban access to sites to only "people with metal detectors"."First I’d like to mention this spectacle-shaped pendant. It is one of the oldest copper objects in Central Europe - we are talking here about the period around 4000 years BC. Roughly ten such pendants have been uncovered in Bohemia, Moravia and Western Slovakia. Since we don’t know where it comes from, its information value is practically non-existent although its material value is incalculable.”
The archaeologists searched the apartment for any records that would show where the artefacts came from, but found nothing about the origin of all the bowls, cups, clips, bracelets, pins, rings and axes. Amateur treasure hunters don’t care about the analytical part of the job and dig wherever their detectors start to beep. This is one of the reasons why professional archaeologists see red when they come across these people at work. Martin Kuna is the deputy director of the Archaeological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. “Another reason is that most of these finds eventually end up in private collections where they lose most of their information, or scientific, value. And few are perhaps aware of yet another reason why using metal detectors for this purpose is harmful – when large amounts of metal objects are regularly brought to light, there are simply not enough archaeologists to examine them properly.”
Experts warn that the case of the dead collector with a huge heap of anonymous items is just the tip of the iceberg. An estimated 10,000 metal detectors are currently used in the pursuit of this hobby in the Czech Republic, and hundreds of thousands of treasures are thought to be stashed in private collections. Some treasure hunters cooperate with museums and only explore locations designated by experts, but on the whole, Martin Kuna says, something should be done to prevent people with metal detectors from causing more damage in the future.
“The law is too weak in this respect. Even when you catch one of those people at the site with a detector and a golden coin in his pocket, you cannot prove that he dug it out right there. Perhaps access to archaeological sites for people with metal detectors should be banned, and perhaps users of metal detectors should be registered.”
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| [note: Raimund Karl of Bangor suggests that Austria should be 'green', not red but his convoluted arguments for an alternative and specific legalistic interpretation of the relevant legislation have not yet convinced me - see his extensive comments in the comments section below and decide for yourselves, the Father-Christmas- buried-in-a-flower-border stunt shows the sort of 'evidence' this professor considers clinching] |
Abstract This methodological study assesses the potential for automatically generated data, netnographic data and market data on metal-detecting to advance cultural property criminology. The method comprises the analysis of open sources that have been identified through multilingual searches of Google Scholar, Google Web and Facebook. Results show significant differences between digital data and market data. These demonstrate the limits of restricted quantitative analysis of online forums and the limits of extrapolation of market data with “culture-bound” measures. Regarding the validity of potential quantitative methods, social networks as well as online forums are used differently in different territories. Restricted quantitative analysis, and its foundational assumption of a constant relationship between the size of the largest online forum and the size of the metal-detecting population, are unsound. It is necessary to conduct extensive quantitative analysis, then to make tentative “least worst” estimates. As demonstrated in the sample territories, extensive analyses may provide empirical data, which revise established estimates. In this sample, they corroborate the detecting community’s own perception that they are ‘beat[ing these sites] to death’.
