Mike.T. Wrote:You clearly don't know anything about metal detecting. For a start off it was a chance discovery. Unless this person had a crystal ball he couldn't have known that he was about to find ''a piece of treasure to sell at auction''. People who do metal detecting spend 99.9 % of their time digging up valueless items. Secondly this wasn't in any context. He did the right thing and reported it and the findspot to the PAS. Who are you to say he was lying ?
Presumably you'd rather this ''limited archaeological resource'' rot away in the ground than be found the way it was ?
I was addressing the point that someone who is qualified and experienced is always better at any job than a random member of the interested public. Especially in the case of archaeology. The sublties of context and depositional processes are beyond the general public. On site I'm forever receiving artefacts from well-meaning farmers or construction crew saying 'hey look what I found'. They are always suprised when I say where did you find it, they seem to think that an artefact carries all the information available with it.
But this is a general problem with the general public's perception of archaeology. Everone is interested in it.....but few even understand the basic principles.
As a matter of fact I do know a bit about metal detecting, having both 'employed' them and suffered site robbing from others.
I know metal detectorists spend 99.9% of their time digging up what they think as valueless items, its unfortunate that these items are often the vital clues us humble archaeologists use to understand sites.
The issue of context has already been pointed out...but remember a field is a context, as is the soil accreciations on the bits of helmet and the other 'valueless' items found with it.
But of course a member of the public wouldn't understand this, as they only see the 'value' of the treasure.:face-stir:
However, you are correct that not all metal detectorists are night-hawkers and tomb-robbers....some are even archaeologists. Important artefacts have always been found as 'chance finds' some are important 'find spots' indicating the possible presence of an archaeological site close by. It's just that it would be much better if
some of these find-spots were not registered in the wrong field (for legal or economic reasons) and some 'context' related information was gathered.
Perhaps some kind of license, or registration of metal detectorists would encourage good practice and reduce the treasure hunting.
The same could be said about archaeologists!