The temporary change of Paul Barford’s blog to invitation-only status following concerted efforts and threats by a group of artefact hunters matters for one stark reason: few involved with the activity, be they detectorist or archaeologist, publicly question its overall effect, whereas he does. Why he’s right to do so can be expressed in 3 brief paragraphs:
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1. It is very clear that metal detecting forums and metal detecting clubs mislead the public (see here and here) but so do the two national bodies: both signed the official Code for Responsible Metal-Detecting yet only ask Members to adhere to their own codes that don’t mention the official one or the need to report finds to PAS. So all three types of detecting bodies project a “responsible” public image yet demand no such behaviour from Members.
2. That wouldn’t matter (as misinformation can easily be countered) except that The Establishment has been arrayed in a way that it too feels a need to adopt a highly positive attitude to artefact hunting and a rosy account of PAS’s progress lest it loses the support of those detectorists that co-operate with it as well as its government paymasters. So it’s a potent mix – an activity with an incentive to misrepresent itself and a quango with an incentive to let them.
3. Thus, any farmer will tell you (having heard it ad nauseam) that criminal nighthawks are a problem but legal detectorists aren’t as they’re “responsible”. But equating “legal” with harmless is a distortion, as PAS’s figures show: most detectorists don’t adhere to the official Code or report all their finds – and since these legal but non-reporting detectorists vastly outnumber nighthawks they cause vastly more cultural damage than nighthawks do.
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So that’s how it is, landowners thinking legal means “harmless”, the public thinking metal detecting is in the national interest and no-one now asking if mining hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites for artefacts each year is damaging. Things couldn’t be more different abroad, with not one country taking Britain’s lead or setting up a Portable Antiquities Scheme of their own. Rónán Swan, Acting Head of Archaeology for the National Roads Authority in Ireland expressed the general foreign view: “It’s inconceivable to me that you can have metal detecting on archaeological sites by non-archaeologists”.
Nevertheless, the British three monkeys approach to heritage conservation and protection, that has never reduced the rate of recreational erosion by even a fraction, now seems set to continue unopposed. “All my fields are hammered, I now have to travel a long way to detect” moaned a detectorist years ago – and on the basis of the present trajectory it seems we may have to say “All OUR fields are hammered” within this generation – but no-one is saying so. Despite any denials, there’s an unofficial and official distortion going on and Paul Barford, who in my view is a better friend to Heritage than those that are party to it, is silent.
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More Heritage Action views on metal detecting and artefact collecting
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The Heritage Journal 
4 comments
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24/09/2011 at 09:00
Pam Braddock
Seems to sum up the situation very concisely, but what on earth can we do about it?
24/09/2011 at 12:05
jacabsolute
Excellent article!
24/09/2011 at 12:54
John Bishop
Is there any update on this matter?. Is Paul going to return to Blogging? I sincerely hope he does as it is always thought provoking, if not a tad tounge in cheek at times.
26/09/2011 at 22:25
Jakob Øhlenschlæger
Being a metal detectorist located in Denmark I must say that I sometimes find it disgusting what I read on british forums. No regard for saving the archaeological record for the future, just how to get as many artifacts as possible out of the ground.
Just the other day one detectorist told with great joy how he convinced a farmer to deep plough two fields where lot of finds had be made over the years. Now he had high hopes for even more turning up. Not a single person pointed to the sad fact that he had convinced the farmer to destroy more of the undisturbed archaeological layers but several congratulated him.
Had it been on a Danish forum he would have been blamed for actively promoting the destruction of the archaeological record and would soon have learned that he had done something the majority of detectorist found wrong.
No wonder Michael Lewis from PAS on his visit in Denmark last year found that: “Interestingly most people in Denmark seemed less favourable disposed towards the English system, believing finders to be greedy and rewards too high.”