Officials seize 27k artifacts looted by a single French treasure hunter | Hacker News Reader

Officials seize 27k artifacts looted by a single French treasure hunter

smithsonianmag.com

46 pointssamizdis60 comments

> As Daniel Boffey notes for the Guardian, using a metal detector for anything other than scientific research is outlawed in France.

Oh wow, there must be a big story behind this law. How could something so mundane as a metal detector be banned? The article says he "stole these from sites", is that implying he went to active dig sites or public attractions?

There is so much to unpack here. Are ground penetrating radars also banned?

Cf https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/journals/opar/2/1/arti... [PDF] for some background on the law.

Same BS law in Poland. No one bothers to look for stuff, but if you happen to find anything you are automatically a criminal.

No, if you do it for personal profit.

Its not unreasonable for the rules to be something more than the playground "Finders, Keepers". Grow up.

Further, Poland has one of the highest rates of metal detector usage.

We perform a lot of other illegal activities, doesnt change the law.

(Ustawa z dnia 23 lipca 2003 r. o ochronie zabytków i opiece nad zabytkami (Dz. U. 2003 Nr 162 poz. 1568) defines metal detector usage a felony, 2018 amendment makes it a crime.

https://histmag.org/Wykrywacz-metali-nowe-prawo-w-Polsce-a-p...

TLDR: illegal, ~100K people do it anyway.

But something being illegal is actually incentive to give it a shot in Poland, this is ancient tradition. At least since Soviet Bloc times and quite possibly before then.

Nielegalny translates roughly as 'must be interesting', or so I'm told ;)

Pre 1989 under Iron Curtain pretty much _everything_ was illegal. Any activity not aligned with primary party goals and thinking lines had some paragraph attached to it. It all stemmed from the "mother country", Stalins Russia. As Beria used to say "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime". Thats Lavrentiy Beria, head of Secret Police under Stalin, and the father of Katyn massacre - murdering 22K Polish military officers with a shot to the back of the head and burying bodies in a forest mass graves.

The Death of Stalin (2017) is a lighthearted movie showing the tragedy, farce and terror of living under Soviet rule.

Poland in 1986 was quite different from what it is today. I don't know how old you are but I remember it quite vividly.

I do remember 1986. Ubiquitous queues and ration stamps for petrol, meat, sugar, chocolate, etc. Teacher telling us to report if parents say bad things about people on TV. Oranges once a year for Christmas from Cuba. Lego Technics set worth several salaries after my father smuggled half a car of crystal glassware to East Germany. Hardly any good memories.

There were good things too: stronger friendships, lots of creativity, less crime (not counting corruption, which was rampant), less drugs.

But yes, you're absolutely right, lots of things were quite terrible.

Really? Is there no chance to report the find legally?

Yes and no. You can report finds and get a reward in most countries but you might risk incriminating yourself at the same time in countries where metal detectors are banned. If it is a one off you are fine, but if you go around finding tons of coins all over the country and reporting them it will look suspicious.

Sure, you can report it and there is even a reward, but only if you found something accidentally without searching for it. For example farmer dragging stuff up with a plow, or builder digging a well. Reporting a find with metal detector is a crime with up to ~$100K and 2 year prison sentence, or up to 8 years if experts deem you destroyed something by accitend.

https://www.adwokat-prawo.com/post/nie-legalne-hobby-poszuki...

It really doesn't matter if anyone bothers to look for it. If it's on public land, it belongs to the state. You're also not allowed to chop down a tree or dig a hole.

You surely means it belongs to society.

The reason is assholes like the guy in this article. Metal detectors are banned in Sweden too and I am all in favor of that law.

I would rather historically interesting objects that don't belong to anyone be unearthed and return to humanity, be they owned by an individual or a museum. Otherwise they continue degrading under the surface, and what good is that?

The whole point of these laws is to ensure that interesting objects return to humanity. When an individual digs up an object and keeps it, it has not returned to humanity. Furthermore, information about the object, such as its location and condition is irretrievably lost. If an object cannot be responsibly recovered and catalogued then it should remain in the ground until it can be.

You imply that an individual is not part of humanity so that only museums, usually governed by the state, create the illusion of humanity. I disagree. The Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution destroyed nearly the entirety of Chinese historical objects. What was saved by unofficial groups or individuals became Chinese history. I'm just glad the Jacobins are not totally in charge in France, as they would think it better to just melt the finds into useful metal.

The issue is that jackasses don't document their finds. Context in which you found something is as important, if not more, than the item. Not to mention idiots destroy archeo sites because they are interested in trinkets they can sell rather than history itself. There is a reason why you don't dig up the entire site but rather put in a few trenches after noninvasive research.

What is the functional difference between destroying an artifact and keeping an artifact in a private collection where nobody can see it, from the point of view of humanity?

Hmmm, well at least a single member of "humanity" in this case knows about it. Still, not exactly fantastic.

That being said, at least with the "private collection" thing it has a chance to be donated to a public institution at a future point. eg when the collector passes away

Destroyed objects clearly don't have that option.

The object itself is usually only as interesting as the area in which it was found - it's the ground and things that surround it that lets archeologists establish the age, meaning and significance of an artifact. Just digging something up destroys that information.

(Also I suspect such artifacts will degrade much faster if unearthed and improperly handled than they would if left in the ground.)

Obviously there are not enough academic archaeologists to dig up the stuff, not even a small fraction probably, considering how much time passed and how much dirt there is to sift through. Plus the vast majority of the found stuff has little historical significance. Finding Roman coins and medieval metal tools should not be equated with finding an Egyptian tomb. Their value is pretty much as collector items. They are sold on eBay.

Why do you think the artifacts will degrade worse if left where they were for a long time already, than if dug up and stored by some amateur?

And, more importantly, the scientific value is mostly lost when removing the artifact from its context.

> How could something so mundane as a metal detector be banned?

Obviously it's not...

The actual law says: "Nul ne peut utiliser du matériel permettant la détection d'objets métalliques, à l'effet de recherches de monuments et d'objets pouvant intéresser la préhistoire, l'histoire, l'art ou l'archéologie, sans avoir, au préalable, obtenu une autorisation administrative délivrée en fonction de la qualification du demandeur ainsi que de la nature et des modalités de la recherche." [Code du patrimoine Article L542-1]

"No one can use material allowing detection of metal objects to look for monuments and objects which can interest prehistory, history, art or archeology, without having, beforehand, obtained an administrative authorization delivered depending the qualifications of the applicant and the nature and modalities of the search."

So basically you cannot use a metal detector to do illegal archeological search. This law is weird though, since it actually condemn the intent and not the act. I'm no lawyer but I'm guessing it's pretty hard to condemn anyone with this law since anyone thoughtful enough can hide his intent (or at least prevent producing any proof of such intent).

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...

Banned to use for searching artifacts - this is a common ban across EU countries. It's the same in Slovakia. You can buy a metal detector, but it's illegal to use it for this purpose.

Wait, he went around different sites all around two countries digging this stuff up, and officials were surprised he didn’t turn it over to the state?

Nobody could be bothered to retrieve these artifacts in the first place. I don’t see how the state has (or should have) any more inherent right to them than this guy.

The least they could do is pay him for the objects. Apparently they’re worth 700k!

No. There are two issues: the artifacts are not just treasure - scientifically their context (in the ground and in time) is what matters, the context the treasure hunter removed them from. I.e., he prevented scientists from ever being able do the digs themselves. The other issue is that, AFAIK, scientists often prefer to leave parts of sites intact for future research, presumably hoping for better technology in the future.

No one else wanted to dig this stuff up. He didn't "prevent" anyone from doing anything.

They denied anyone in future from digging it up (or not doing so, noninvasive archeo is a thing). I'm both surprised and not to find such selfish arguments as yours here.

The UK has similar laws, requiring people who find things defined under the Treasure Act 1996 (except in Scotland) as treasure to report their find to a coroner within 14 days. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996

Finders have to offer the treasure for sale to a museum/similar at a price determined by an independent panel.

The UK also has broader, older rules governing "treasure trove", with slight regional variations. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove

The bottom line isn't "finders keepers", but rewards are fair and often handsome. The rules try to strike a balance between public interest/education, common good, and providing an incentive against individual greed.

This makes a lot of sense. These artefacts usually disappear in a museum's basement and nobody actually gives a shit, but officials act as if they have great value. If the museums actually have to shill out some money, it becomes quite clear which artefacts actually do have value and which don't.

This is honestly an abhorrent way to think about archaeological finds. You do not have to ascribe a monetary value to everything you see and our history should not be bought and sold as a commodity.

> our history should not be bought and sold as a commodity

The thousands, maybe millions of old coins that we find from previous eras are absolutely a commodity, and it doesn’t detract from our heritage in the slightest.

The largest set of coins I’ve seen was in the british museum and that was already too much. I think they have one of every variety of coin and it just makes my head spin.

Once they have one of each (add another 10 for other musea across the country) the remaining thousands can remain in private hands.

Removing the treasures from their context removes a lot of the scientific value of the finds. A coin tells us that the much more if you know where it was buried.

Mit to mention that the fact that European states are so authoritarian and immoral about it incentivized theft and deception. I wouldn’t have even bothered reporting anything if I were him, and this case seems to prove the point why. They’ve likely also note through their draconian policies lost the information on where the finds were made and all associated historical knowledge, e.g., the coins of a certain type would indicate the location of possible troop movement that was not clear before.

“This is a clear message to those who, for the benefit and selfish pleasure of a few, rob us of our common heritage and erase entire swaths of our history.”

There should be a better process to legally report the items or exchange them for market value so this wouldn't happen in the first place?

This will only serve to entice treasure hunting, which is an inherently destructive activity.

It does not have to be destructive, and a swarm of amateurs could achieve much more than those lazy ass ivory tower archaeologists if a good framework of rules existed.

The goal of science is to obtain knowledge and, in this case, learn more about the past and someone's heritage; not to loot.

Not really. Archeological digs aren't just scooping dirt and sifting out objects. It's a careful process that pays as much attention to the ground being dug as it does to individual items, because surroundings provide clues about the object's provenance. A "swarm of amateurs" with profit motive will not care about any of that.

How is it destructive if before the treasure hunter there was no treasure and now there is one? Things underground degrade with time so finding them helps to preserve them.

Some artifacts last hundreds to thousands of years in their original condition yet degrade almost instantly once exposed to air, especially the oxygen in it. Excavation is a delicate science.

Am I understanding this correctly that the place he “looted” from was the ground? As in he found and dug up coins?

And this is so heinous an action that metal detectors are banned?

Yes, because if you remove treasures from their context we you often destroy an important archeological site. Many European countries do not want looters to destroy their heritages and windows into history.

So they leave valuable shit in the ground, and act all offended when someone uses an "illegal" metal detector?

Aint gonna work!

Interesting. There seems to be a major cultural difference on this.

On the one hand, the argument is that individuals collecting artifacts destroys the scientific utility of the excavation site. On the other hand, someone doing the work to find coins seems better than nobody doing that work and having them lay in the ground.

I wonder if there are more instances of this trade-off between potential good and immediate good.

"Someone doing the work to find coins" - the flip side is "selfish with no moral compass". Historians won't have reliable sources anymore, parts of sites will be missing, this is such a waste. But hey someone made a few bucks.

Or alternatively, nobody will find those coins and we won't even know they existed.

We know the coins exists. Duh.

The coins existing has no value except to criminals. The actual value is the total context of the site which has huge value to archeologists. Archeology is also progressing so the later something is excavated the more we learn. So just destroying stuff like this guy did robs us all of tons of data.

> I wonder if there are more instances of this trade-off between potential good and immediate good.

Trading off long term good for immediate satisfaction is pretty common. Getting the discipline to wait for the long term gain is a thing we train kids to do, with varying degrees of success. I’m a sucker for wanting the nice shiny thing right now.

This is an interesting topic because it's not something I would have thought about as an American. You aren't likely to find an artifact of much archeological value in much of the United States using a metal detector. Maybe if you could we would take the same stance as Europe on the issue.

Doesn’t the US have similar laws preventing the collection of Native American artifacts, though? They just didn’t use much metal.

The difference is not between potential good and immediate good, it is between common good and what's (supposedly) good for the looter.

> On the other hand, someone doing the work to find coins seems better than nobody doing that work and having them lay in the ground.

Taking the coins from the ground isn't the important part, its the scientific analysis in context that provides insight into the place's history. A coin in itself doesn't tell much, a lot of the same were probably found before.

It would be better for the sites to be explored properly later on. If it was a first come, first serve kind of thing, there wouldn't be anything left for future technology.

There is no good at all here.

Prior to some big court cases and changes to repatriation law in the 80s and 90s, the mafia was heavily involved with looting archaeological heritage in places like Italy. Criminals would dig them up and move them through Swiss freeports using false provenance records and auction them off to museums and private collectors in other countries. This caused irreparable damage to our understanding of these objects history and context.

https://www.npr.org/2011/05/16/136252401/chasing-aphrodite-a...

It’s not often discussed, but much of what you can see of Greco-Roman artifacts in the permanent collections of American museums, for example, was likely to have been looted.

> “This is a clear message to those who, for the benefit and selfish pleasure of a few, rob us of our common heritage and erase entire swaths of our history.”

Speaking of robbing heritage and history, this guy is a complete amateur, compared to the history robbing that the European nations engaged in. Many archeological treasures were stripped from India, Africa, and the Middle East and sent to European museums. Furthermore, those collections are still at the museums and for the most part have not been returned to the countries from which they were taken.

Alternative news: "Treasure hunters seize 27k artifacts looted by a single French official".

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