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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

> It is against the law in Ireland to search for archaeological objects using a metal detector unless written permission has been given. Penalties can be up to three months in prison or a fine of up to €63,486 (£53,435).

Written permission from who? He was on his own farmland. You have to write a plea to the government to request permission to use a metal detector on your own land? And, if that's the case, are such requests usually granted? What's the rationale here, and what harms does this permission-first system aim to prevent?

> It is understood, however, that Dunne will not face charges.

If it's a bad law that they're making a point of not enforcing, why not repeal the law?

So many questions.

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These laws are a balancing act between heritage conservation and civil rights like allowing people to enjoy metal detecting as a hobby. Without these laws and effective enforcement of them, looters show up with bulldozers, metal detectors, and work crews in the middle of the night to dig up anything they can sell to what's now a billion dollar global market. I've spent a lot of time as an archaeologist looking at the aftermath and doing public education to stop it.

Antiquities laws are generally designed to make antiquities "visible" to the state while also giving authorities teeth if they need to go after these sorts of people. To do that, there's a whole host of laws and conventions that require reporting virtually everything and align the financial incentives/penalties to ensure valuations on any antiquities discovered are as reasonably accurate as possible. It makes things a little inconvenient for the hobbyists, but I personally find that a reasonable tradeoff given the damage that otherwise occurs.

>>These laws are a balancing act between heritage conservation and civil rights like allowing people to enjoy metal detecting as a hobby. Without these laws and effective enforcement of them, looters show up with bulldozers, metal detectors, and work crews in the middle of the night to dig up anything they can sell to what's now a billion dollar global market. I've spent a lot of time as an archaeologist looking at the aftermath and doing public education to stop it.

That doesn't seem to happen in England, which allows metal detecting.

Effectively the same thing applies in the UK. Intentionally searching for these kinds of objects requires an archaeological excavation permit. Unintentionally finding one requires reporting it.

The sitcom The Detectorists goes into this hobby in the UK in a lot of detail and has several plots about reporting responsibilities.

What a fantastic show. The entire thing was so cozy.

Yes, reporting. Not that the whole thing is illegal unless granted government permission.

> That doesn't seem to happen in England, which allows metal detecting.

In England you need permission of the landowner (or which ever authority is responsible for a piece of public land) and must report any archeological finds. There's a lot of illegal metal detecting at night - "Nighthawking", and fairly tough convictions.

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

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-68445207

Laws requiring permission from the land owner to use a metal detector and dig vs. needing such permission on your own land seems very different IMO.

The English law seems focused on preventing trespassing and digging holes in people's yards, and also to make sure the land owner gets compensated for anything of value found. (e.g. from the link by madax below: In England "An experienced detectorist, Davies would have known he was entitled to half of the proceeds of legal sale of the treasure, instead choosing to deprive the landowner and public by stealing this exceptional and significant treasure.")

The Irish law seems focused on preventing anything from being found.

There is also a fair bit of anger against FLOs (Find Liaison Offers) that the finds are reported to. Detectorists often get low-balled on the value of their find (after a 2 year wait) to make the item affordable for local museums.

Literally from the same day’s news: “Metal detectorist who stole £3m Viking hoard jailed for five more years”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/sep/12/metal-detect...

It seems to me that the evil of having haphazard laws that are enforced arbitrarily on discretion is worse than the evil of heritage loss. This solution is much worse than the cure. Yes it's hard for governments to write narrowly tailored laws to achieve narrowly tailored objectives while avoiding loopholes. That doesn't mean they should devolve into making overly broad laws and then enforcing those laws arbitrarily. That's just behaving like a tyrant.

>You have to write a plea to the government to request permission to use a metal detector on your own land?

no, that's not the law (because you changed what you quoted). the law is "you can't use a metal detector on your own property to search for archaeological objects without permission." You can use it as this farmer said he did as part of working your farm, although if you do find an archeological object I think you are required to leave it in place which he did not do.

There are other restrictions concerning public lands and registered sites of some description.

From the end of the article:

> The NMI also wishes to remind the public that unregulated use of detection devices causes serious damage to Ireland’s archaeological heritage.

If you want to know more, the NMI have a detailed article explaining the rationale

https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/The-Law-on-...

There is no "his own farmland". All land in Ireland is owned by Ireland. You don't magically become a sovereign of your own plot just because you have a title deed, Ireland still ultimately owns that land. You're just granted most of the rights relating to use of that land. But not all rights. And archeological finds fall in the "not all rights" category.

The rationale is that while you may own the land, you don't own the artifacts, and the state has an interest in ensuring that history is recorded and preserved professionally. In effect, archeology is a licensed occupation, but then so is cutting hair in most US states.

If the story about metal in machinery is true, then really no offense was committed. Using a metal detector to find what you think is a loose horseshoe is fine. The story might also just be a convenient cover, but no-one will really care. In Ireland, authorities tend to be good natured and mostly only out to get egregious offenders. Maybe the metal detector guy has been looking for coins without permission, and it'll be handled at the level of "ah here would you have a bit of cop on".

“In effect, archeology is a licensed occupation, but then so is cutting hair in most US states.”

This doesn't strengthen the argument.

I do see some value in having the state license people who make a business of convincing strangers to allow them to use sharp cutting implements on their body in ways that, if not properly maintained and used, could lead to injury, to undesired slow-to-reverse harm to appearance, or to transmission of infestations like head lice.

There's plenty of room to disagree on what the specifics of this oversight should involve, but some degree of pre-approval seems very much appropriate.

>The rationale is that while you may own the land, you don't own the artifacts[...]

At first I bristled a little, but given a pause to think it through, it makes great sense!

Fact is, we as a species did not advance quickly enough to record our origins and a lot of our history. Perhaps this kind of thing always happens. Nobody knows and we have a sample size of one at present.

Our history is a shared thing by our very human condition and the nature of history.

Of course we benefit overall with policy like this even if at times a few of us feel wronged.

A lot of people throughout history thought the world would end long before this because an issue. They would have laughed at the idea of preserving things for thousands of years.

Maybe in another thousand years post-apocalyptic scavengers will wonder why we tried to preserve history while simultaneously destroying our future.

"Owning" the land is more of a license from a government. It is a taxi medallion you trade with other people for money.

Lots of stuff you cant do on your own land without permission.

Not to mention, you likely don't own the water or mining rights to the land you own, nor does your ownership extend significantly up, either.

In Spain we have a mining law that goes as follows: I have a plot of land, but I need a permission to mine it. But if mining company X suspects my plot can be mined, they can get permission to mine my plot before I do. They can't mine it if I don't let them, but if anyone is going to mine is the company.

IIRC, a few years ago some company called Odyssey that go around trying to unearth gold from antiquity, was reminded by the government that in Spain you can't do that, and every single gram of gold you find is property of the State. https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/2021/10/19/616e897de4d4d8e73f...

Unfortunately, our justice is painfully slow and ineficient, and Odissey got 500 millions in gold from a shipwreck due to a legal failure.

> your own land

Your assumptions about what this means are parochial. Think a bit deeper about what ownership really means in this context.

So much will never be found thanks to this law.

Random amateurs digging stuff up is next to useless from an archaeological perspective - once you've disturbed the earth and taken stuff out of the ground you've already destroyed so much contextual information.

Even professional trained archaeologists intentionally only excavate parts of sites when they know there's more to find because we expect there to be much better technology in the future.

Amateurs digging for artifacts are destroying knowledge, not discovering it.

I mean, this incident should call your assumptions about this into question.

Yes, some might be lost by random digging. But if it would not otherwise ever be found then nothing has been lost.

If something's been in the ground for hundreds of years, it'll still be there for a few hundred more. There's little reason to want to maximize the amount you're excavating right now. Unless your goal is to find treasure and profit somehow.

I think the greater concern for artifact loss is someone doing earthworks, finding something, and then not reporting it because they don't want to wait for archaeologists to check out the site.

So much will never be looted or destroyed because of this law. As an Irish person who has spent some time working as an archaeological grunt (basically, I dig then as soon as I spot something, pass it over to a real archaeologist) - this is a hugely important law. Because, for large developers, the immediate response on finding something is to hide/destroy it so that they don't lose money while an archaeological survey is carried out. And for landowners, I wager a majority are likely to keep it as a curio if it doesn't look valuable.

The fact is that owning a piece of farmland doesn't give you ownership of our country's heritage. Nor should it. You get to raise cows on the land. You don't get to mine it (without permission), you don't get to turn it into a housing development (without permission), and you don't get to turn it into an archaeological dig site (without permission).

In response to "our country's heritage": Ireland is not a person so the concept is entirely political.

And provided you don't cause any negative externalities, you should have the default right to do whatever you want on your land.

> Ireland is not a person so the concept is entirely political.

Of course. Is that some kind of gotcha?

> provided you don't cause any negative externalities, you should have the default right to do whatever you want on your land.

Destroying our chances to understand history is the externality.

But here is the thing, if you are an Irish citizen you are free to advocate for a change in law. If you convince enough of your peers that it should be changed it will be changed. Isn’t that great?

Generally, the later we excavate something, the greater the amount of historical information we'll be able to get from that excavation.

Of course, this has to be balanced with some amount of excavation to actually improve those methods, and with enough information being gleaned today to keep us interested in actually funding the practice of archaeology for tomorrow.

Templo Mayor. Mexico. They discovered it recently next to the big famous Cathedral.

They flattened a few city blocks to excavate it.

But they will never flatten the cathedral, or other large famous buildings in the vicinity.

Point is: the longer we wait to excavate, the more the likelihood that something's been constructed on top.

For one thing, you can require an archeological survey before starting the build, as part of the normal permitting process. And this is especially important (and easy to enforce) if the building requires excavation anyway.

But secondly, as long as the building doesn't destroy the site (say, the ruins/remains are buried deep enough), then there is no problem, and the logic still applies: it will be found some few decades or centuries later, so chances are there will be more that can be gleaned from it then.

In the early 80s a couple of lads found the Derrynaflan hoarde. A collection of stunning religious artefacts dating from the 9th century.

This resulted in a whole legal mess where they were demanding a payment from the state of what would be arounf €25 million in todays money, after months of legal arguing they got a payout of what would be around €200k today. While this was ongoing there was an explosion in the number of people going out metal detecting for similar items and it's almost certain some items were found and not delcared to the state.

So to protect the nations heritage - and we have a lot of it - from being scavenged these strict laws were introduced.

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