We have searched in vain for a clear expression of opinion by an official body relating to the moral issues which recreational and entrepreneurial digging for archaeological artefacts raise. We suspect that in Britain at least no such formal opinion has been published since the activity is legally sanctioned but also subject to recommended but purely voluntary preferred parameters, both implying a toleration of multiple and conflicting behaviours, this being a logical absurdity that cannot be expressed as a single moral position.
To fill the gap, and to provide a basis for discussion, we have produced our own. We should be pleased to receive comments or suggestions for amendments at info@heritageaction.org or in the Comments section.
A Portable Antiquities Charter
1. Archaeology, whether static or portable, is a physical manifestation of History.
2. Consequently, while physical archaeology may be owned individually or collectively it also has an abstract component, knowledge, which is a common inheritance and therefore collectively owned.
3. Physical ownership can be conveniently defined by laws. Knowledge cannot be. Hence, knowledge is indisputably owned but cannot be effectively asserted by its owners, which is the antithesis of ownership. It follows that if society’s claim to ownership of its own history is not to be surrendered it must be actively asserted, if not in law then as a moral principle.
4. From this moral principle flow the following moral assumptions which society has a duty to itself to declare and act upon in relation to the knowledge unearthed during the deliberate recovery of buried portable antiquities by any individual or group, whether motivated by pleasure, interest, profit, conservation or scholarship:
(I) No single individual or group can morally lay claim to, annexe, conceal or destroy it.
(ii) Any deliberate unearthing or removal of buried archaeology, irrespective of legal rights, ownerships or permissions, cannot be held to be moral unless it is done with the consent of and in a manner approved by wider society including the delivery of any and all knowledge relating to the act which society may require.
The Heritage Journal 
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19/03/2009 at 23:19
corinne
Thats a very convoluted and complicated way of saying items should be recorded isnt it Nigel? 🙂
20/03/2009 at 10:17
heritageaction
Hi Co. Thanks for commenting.
I hope it is more than “a very convoluted and complicated way of saying items should be recorded”. It is an attempt to go beyond the well-worn mantra that items should be recorded and to lay out precisely WHY. If right, it suggests that recording is a moral imperative for anyone that wants to do right by society and there is no useful metal detecting debate other than the one that should exist within the conscience of the individual.
Seen this way, those who don’t record can’t claim they are exercising their freedom to see as wrong-headed or spiteful the opinions of “dictatorial archies”, “heritage brownshirts” or even “overly co-operative lickspittle colleagues” 😉 for all those are irrelevant.
The charter proposes that recording or not recording is a personal, moral choice, and that alone. I doubt if PAS will be posting their agreement or putting it on their front page, for obvious reasons, but equally I doubt if they will say it is wrong since actually it precisely corresponds with all modern archaeological thinking. If non-recorders want to offer us an alternative version though we’ll be delighted to publish it!
21/03/2009 at 07:33
Heritage Action
Apropos this issue Corinne, you may have seen this heartfelt condemnation of nighthawks on a detectorists’ forum yesterday:
“NO you cannot just do what you want and rob everyone of their legitimate history, just because you think society is not for you and you don’t want to play by the rules.”
Every detectorist would passionately agree with that of course and this strikes me as significant since the words imply recognition not just of criminal wrongdoing but moral transgression as well. That there is a moral dimension, quite independent of the issue of legality, is precisely what our Code suggests, and if nighthawking involves moral transgression then non-reporting does as well.
In my opinion it would be both better and more logical if reporting detectorists applied precisely the same degree of disapprobation to the behaviour of their non-reporting colleagues as they do to nighthawks. Of course, they do not. This is not to say most detectorists are either stupid or amoral. Rather, I think they are human and like all of us friendship gets in the way of morality, to the benefit of our friends.
But personally, I can’t see how the hobby can ever arrive at a position where it is comfortable with itself or with everyone else unless those who record grasp the nettle and say, far more clearly to those who don’t:
“NO you cannot just do what you want and rob everyone of their legitimate history, just because you think society is not for you and you don’t want to play by the rules.”
As one of the hobby’s bêtes noire I am much maligned for taking such an “extreme” view which is held to be counter-productive to the softly-softly education and liaison route which PAS is mandated to follow. But I am unrepentant. The PAS experiment, IMO, missed out on a vital truth. Persuasion from one side only is of very limited effectiveness (and gives rise to all sorts of resentments and tensions, as we have seen). Nothing works even a tenth as well as peer pressure. Until recording detectorists embrace that idea and make clear that they view non-recording as morally identical to nighthawking progress will remain painfully slow and may well level off at an unacceptable plateau. Meanwhile, the information loss will continue and our exaggerated, nonsensical, ridiculous erosion counter will continue to tick out it’s outrageous lies and I will continue to be blaggarded for criticising non-reporters with the degree of bitterness that PAS is constrained from voicing and which thousands of recording detectorists ought to be adopting. The best way to shut me up would be to drown me out with agreement!
21/03/2009 at 18:35
co
Not tons of opinion I would disagree with there Nigel – but you know that already….
Could you not write it in laymans terms tho?
21/03/2009 at 19:21
Heritage Action
“but you know that already…”
Of course I do.
“Could you not write it in laymans terms tho?”
Well the problem as you know is that most of what I write is handed down to me from above. But I’ll see if I can come up with something a bit less biblical…
22/03/2009 at 07:25
heritageaction
How about this then Co, coming at it from a different angle:
A Recording Detectorists’ Declaration –
(Crucially, not imposed by others but implicit in the fact they have chosen to record …)
Being a recording detectorist means:
1. Acknowledging you aren’t the owner of history but only its temporary curator.
2. Acting accordingly by passing it on promptly and in full to everyone else – not as a voluntary act but a duty.
3. Accepting that an obligation that applies to you applies equally to others without exception and saying so.
Clause 3 is the tricky one of course as many recording detectorists say the decision to record is a purely personal one and their friends have a perfectly valid right to choose not to. I think the term “voluntary”, originally adopted to avoid putting detectorists’ backs up, has done immense damage as it has highlighted non-recording is legal but diverted attention from the fact that if you wish to do “right” by everyone else recording is an inescapable duty.
PAS’s first words on its website describe it as a voluntary scheme – in other words, something people can take or leave. How much better it would have been if it said it was a recording scheme for those that recognise history ought to be shared – signalling that there is no metal detecting “debate” only a division between those who understand why they should record and those who don’t.
(The last bit of Clause 3 of course is also the key to gaining the overall “respect” the hobby so yearns for. I can’t see how it will get it any other way. I recall making a joint proposal with the (current) Admin of UKDN for the formation of an Institute of Recording Detectorists but it was speedily rejected on the grounds it would be “divisive”. It certainly would be. That was the whole point! Even if an actual split is impossible a much more overt and proactive acknowledgement of the philosophical one is essential in my view.)