Friday 13 September 2013

Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Three Stereotypes

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Over on a metal detecting forum near you is a discussion about a recent BBC1 TV programme  which featured illegal artefact hunting (so-called Nighthawks) Re: detectorists caught on scheduled site. The flow of discussion over the next two pages is predictable, a huge amount of ranting and posturing about "what they should do to nighthawks" and "how I despise these people, getting our hobby a bad name", which perpetuates one stereotype. Then we have the "I'm only in it fer the love of history" brigade, going on and on about how its not the money, it's the "lost history" their hoiking is finding (forgetting the destruction of the ability of somebody else to use that artefact in situ to tell a history based on a methodology rather more sophisticated than hoiking).  Recently we have seen an outbreak of flagellants in the hobby, those who seem bent on making a damaging comment for the hell of it. Here's one:
Postby alfaowner » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:20 pm For what its worth my views are as follows .. 50 percent of detectorists I have met on rallies are worse than nighthawks ... Rip it out off the ground and sell it on for what ever they can get for it .. These are the people that supposedly do the right thing and abide by the detectorists code of conduct and the treasure act at all times .... Bxxxxxxks do they .... B| This hobbys full of pirates and that's a fact ..... B| I've seen it first hand on many occasions ......Shameful ;;z At least a nighthawks are discreet ;;z ;;z ;;z.
In my opinion, this is a wind-up. This guy, I suspect, has not the faintest idea what is fellow rally participants do days or weeks later with the finds they make when they get home, or whether they abide by the/a code or not. I think Alfaowner here is baiting us, by trying to spread a third stereotype as a joke on the conservationists. If so, like detectorist John Howland and others of his ilk, this means Alfaowner sees the whole question of heritage conservation as a subject for guffawing tekkie hilarity on a par with the crudity, fart jokes and toilet humour beloved of the milieu.

TAKE A GOOD LOOK at this behaviour, for these are precisely the sort of people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a "policy".  



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