EDIT: Shout-Out for metal detecting in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists
As someone who used to be in that field, I never understood why people don't do any research before getting into metal detecting. It should be obvious after even a tiny bit of reading about it that most finds are mostly useless without the context in which they were deposited. This context is usually completely destroyed by digging without knowledge of how to properly document it (that's why so many archaeologists kind of hate Schliemann, even though it has been 150 years). And on top of that most laypeople don't even properly record the location of the find. But many people, once they have started, seem to develop a sort of identity around it, and from that point on, most are impervious to new information. I've often heard that "these greedy archaeologists / government officials want to take what's rightfully mine" or "they don't appreciate me, I'm just trying to preserve history".
It's generally either total ignorance or "I didn't want to get fined" that lead to situations like the article. The latter is the same reason shady companies don't record where they disposed of chemicals in the woods, but somehow it's okay for you? Because you have convinced yourself you are "preserving history" by removing a bronze axehead from a location that has preserved it for over 2000 years?
It's truly a shame. There are of course some who work with local archaeologists, have received a bit of training and know how to dig and document, and when to stop digging, but from what I've seen, they are a tiny minority. And even many of them do more harm than good.
Some archeologists only work with them because they know that these people would dig or loot without them otherwise, and destroy much more in the process. But they can't say that openly, because in today's climate of anti -intellectualism, this would be seen as "ivory tower behaviour", and even more people would go detecting completely unsupervised. Just like rolling coal and the like, some people just really don't like being told what to do, no matter the disparity in knowledge about the subject.
Sorry about the rant, it's just all rather frustrating sometimes. In my country, the laws surrounding excavations are so stupid that no-one is happy with them, but archaeologists don't have a lobby of course, so we'll just have to live with the status quo.
You’re heaping a lot of assumptions on to people who do metal detecting.
What makes you so confident that these people went out with the goal of finding and destroying archaeological sites with their metal detector? Finding archaeological artifacts is an extremely rare edge case in metal detecting. I doubt these people had any idea they were digging up valuable artifacts until they were completely out.
> It's generally either total ignorance or "I didn't want to get fined" that lead to situations like the article
When the fine is on the order of a decent annual income, it should come as no surprise that people don’t want to get fined. It should also come as no surprise that anyone who discovers any artifacts like this would be highly incentivized to hide their origin.
I don’t know what you expect. For someone to generously turn their probably accidental finding in and pay a massive amount of money for the privilege?
I know that finding hoards of 1000+ year old coins is completely par for the course and is really the goal of the exercise. It may be different in the new world where ancient metal is uncommon, but that's how it works here.
Groups like the one my relative is in get special permission to search on building sites before they lay the foundations. I believe the developers are obliged to allow this. Destruction of the archeological context isn't such a concern there because the site is being destroyed anyway, but detectorists are still legally obliged to report any treasures to the authorities and can be forced to sell them to a museum.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/18/change-to-uk...
It might be a better attitude than criminalization. People are still going to do it, so instead of repression, try to reel them in and teach them the basics for harm reduction.
Wait, can't something similar be written about pot or abortion?
Because people do it for fun, not to do archeological research
> And on top of that most laypeople don't even properly record the location of the find
what detectorists find is 99.9% of the time just crap, and the 99.9% of the 0.1% remaining is just stuff that is not interesting for archeology or history. Interesting finds are extremely rare
> The latter is the same reason shady companies don't record where they disposed of chemicals in the woods,
Yes, polluting a place and finding a badly damaged roman coin on a field used for centuries is exactely the same
> but somehow it's okay for you? Because you have convinced yourself you are "preserving history" by removing a bronze axehead from a location that has preserved it for over 2000 years?
They don't preserve history, but neither do historians and archaeologists in the cases mentioned, because they don't and won't carry out any research in these places anyway. It's obviously different when detectorist work on archeological places but it's forbidden almost everywhere
If they were smarter, archeologists should push for more sensible rules, and for collaboration with detectorist associations instead of blind repression.
That's a bit of a disingenuous argument though. To a first approximation, no-one's out to find ring pulls and bottle caps. The fun is feeling like you might win the lottery, encouraged by reports of people who do. If it wasn't for the 0.1% no-one would be doing this.
> "archeologists should push for more sensible rules"
...like what?
The thing that is of value is the site with the artefact in place. Digging up and sending in the artefact on its own with no other information is like scraping all the paint off a painting and sending the scrapings. Yes, your paint detector found some paint, and for once it wasn't junk. You've won the lottery. Great! Awesome! Bully for you! I bet it felt wonderful. But it's too late. You've already destroyed the thing that made it interesting, valuable and important.
A rule that fails to discourage this destruction is not a "sensible rule". Sure, once the destruction has happened, it's better to have the anonymous paint scrapings than to have nothing at all; but the archaeologists will still grieve when they receive that package, just as you would grieve if someone broke something important to you - even if you weren't previously aware of its existence! - and sent you some of the broken pieces; and they will push back on any change that might in any way encourage more people to pull this crap.
> because they don't and won't carry out any research in these places anyway
Until the site is destroyed, it's possible it will be identified and researched. Once it is destroyed, this can never happen.