Lets start off with one question...
If archaeologists are not regulated or require and form of licence...why should detectorists?
No banning... but stay cool
Another day another WSI?
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Professional Archaeologists are regulated to a greater or lesser degree by for example Home Office Licences, the curatorial system, funding bodies, PAS, the planning system and similar. Also the Ancient Monuments Law and AAI law. I keep on forgetting other regulations such as those for conservation areas and listed building. There are also regulations on wrecks.
The point is professional archaeologists if anything take all this regulation very seriously.
None professional archaeologists on the otherhand while bound by much of this regulation may or may not follow it particularly to the same degree.
Until the fundamental principal that a land owner owns what is on his land is changed or the entire country is scheduled licensing is impractical.
As things stand somebody can be prosecuted for retreiving what they lawfully own for example an iron nail on a SAM because they use a metal detector. On the otherhand the same person cannot be prosecuted for picking up the same nail if they find it while ploughing.
Peter
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I'd like to see the actual macchine licensed. It happened to CB radios in 1981, every user had to buy a licence for the cb radio and change from 27mhz am to 27mhz fm, illegal use of the old cb became a serious offence within weeks citizens band was virtually gone!
Something similair could be done like making club membership a condition of ownership and making the clubs accountable for their members too, I think within a short period of time metal detecting would become a thing of the past.
I'd like to think so anyway!!
deep
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Licensing wouln't make detecting a thing of the past. A good thing too! I think it's the way forward though, and would quickly separate the ethical clubs and MD's from the ones paying lip service.
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The concept of licencing has been discussed and rejected.. Who would provide the licences? who would check them?
I would however like to see the Detecting community take this issue into hand... the NCMD (National Council of Metal Detectors) and FID (Federation of Independant Detecorists) are in constant negotiation with CBA, PAS and DEFRA.. to find suitable schemes.
It is looking hopeful that the vast majority of detectoirsts want to be recognised as people who care for teh heritage as much as archaeolgoists do, what they do not like is being talked down to, told they are theives, despised etc etc...
I recently instigated a scheme whereby archaeolgoical contractors and detectorists work together on development sites. Result... Finds that would never have come to light in a 5% evaluation and a realisation that both archaeologists and detectorists both knew their subjects well and professionally.
Cooperation.... Guidelines...... Recording....... Respect
Another day another WSI?
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Right, where was I? I've been around for a while and in all that time I've only ever worked for one unit who used a metal detector to scan for finds in the topsoil before breaking out trenches with a machine. Last year working for a large unit on a pagan Anglo-Saxon cemetery there were serious concerns raised about night-hawks. I asked why we didn't just scan the site first with our MD and the reply was, "We haven't got one, we were thinking about getting one but we didn't get round to it." So the only solution was to seed the site as it was all on glacial till and cut features were not obviously apparent. MDs could be used a lot more effectively if the person wielding them was an archaeologist who knows about finds (including non-metallics), stratigraphy, recording and how to dig a sondage (a TST wouldn't go amiss either). If we can do a geophysical survey surely we can manage a MD survey?
P.S. It's good to be back.
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first off... thanks for coming back!
I think you have in fact hit the nail on the head first time... All of us suffer at the hands of Night hawks... The Unit in question.. could have solved the problem and made a real differnce to community archaeology by just asking a local group (in my county we keep a standing list of amatuer archaeologists, vollunteers and detectorists.) Sounds like they were just being lazy and also forgetting that the whole point of what we do is to get people involved.
We have another similar site up near us... Big contractor has been digging it with both locals and detectorists... a real success that makes us look like the good guys!
I have asked detectorists about site seeding... they have jsut laughed and suggested that it was fairly pointless.. you can filter out signals... so... stainless steel... set to ignore... and off you go..... aluminium... no problem. These guys told me this after a discussion on seeding sites to protect them... thier suggestion was... and I honestly believe it is the most practical... was to have them very publically remove all topsoil finds... record them.. hand them over... keep em... it did not matter to them... jsut finding and being part of it was the buzz for them. Nighthaks will not search a site that has been 'cleared' already.....
Pity the company did not think about all this.
Once again... welcome back
Another day another WSI?
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We've tended to use small brass bolts and nuts before. They seem to be dense enough not be filtered out by all but the most sophisticated machines.
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would it not be better to work with local detectorists so that we don't need to seed sites. Which IMHO is not going to stop NightHawks.
It also endgenders a sence of cooperation rather than atagonisation that seems to have characterised archeolgoist detectorist relationships for the past 30 years.
I too used to see a detectorist and would sneer or become enraged... then I got involved with them.. teh rest is history
Another day another WSI?
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To combat the effects of nighthawking, legislation is the way forward. I agree with Dr Wardle...the law at present is inadequate, unworkable and laughable. One thing that does occur to me, rally events where large numbers of detectorists turn up and rape sites- can usually only do this with the landowners permission. Usually, landowners and detectorists have an unwritten agreement...landowner either gets half the proceeds or has the pick of the finds that the detectorists admit to finding. How about a change in the law along the lines of Dr Wardles concept of land ownership? Rallies would stop if the landowner no longer had the right to do as they pleased with the nations heritage. Licensing has to be the way forwards, for them and us.
