Sometimes (well quite often lately actually) the super tanker that is the British archaeological Establishment changes its course a little. One such trajectory twitch seems to have happened last December.
We have often suggested (and many agree) Treasure rewards are indecently high – and unnecessarily so. That”s why pledge number 5 of the Ethical Metal Detecting Association obliges Members to agree to this: In the event that a public museum wishes to purchase a find, Members will voluntarily forego a significant portion of any benefit (whether Treasure Act reward or ex-gratia share offered by the landowner) in order to enable the museum to purchase at less than full value as we believe accepting maximum rewards are inconsistent with an ethical approach, as is obliging hard-pressed museums to buy finds at full market value).
…. and now, Michael Lewis, the deputy head of PAS has come back from a fact-finding mission in Denmark with the impression that similar opinions have been arrived at elsewhere, both in Britain and abroad:
It should be stressed that Mr Lewis didn’t express the “g” word (greedy) or the “t” word, (too high) he merely said it was what most people in Denmark thought. But who doesn’t? Not any man born of woman that doesn’t go metal detecting, surely? For here’s the current list of the scores of museums and heritage organisations facing cuts or closure because of lack of money.
In the face of that, who but the unthinking wing of detecting would insist that detectorists, alone in the whole public and private economy, should be totally immune from cuts? Immune, even while DEFRA is decimated, PAS is squeezed, EH is forced to slash what it can do and the government is looking to dump it’s duties onto the Public. A Big Society in which everyone is being asked to do their bit. All except certain people who are blatant in their threats towards the rest of us if they don’t get every penny, and promptly, else they’ll break the law and won’t declare their finds! Society has been warned about that in unmistakeable terms. Emphatically. In hundreds and hundreds of metal detecting forum postings and on Britarch.
Of course, the vast rewards currently paid are not only at the expense of the economy, the rest of the heritage sector and the public they are also against the interests of metal detecting itself – although getting many detectorists to comprehend that would be like explaining cycling to a turbot.
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More Heritage Action views on metal detecting and artefact collecting
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2 comments
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17/02/2011 at 14:20
Jakob
From my danish viewpoint the danish law/practise in regard to metal detecting is the best in the world (doesn’t mean it’s perfect) cause it keeps both detectorists and museums/archaeologists happy.
It can’t however be “exported” as such cause path dependence plays a major part in changing a practise. It’s not likely that brits will ever really understand the symbolic capital danish detectorists gaing by having af find declared “danefæ”, nor that the great public interest in and understanding of archaeology in Denmark will be matched.
17/02/2011 at 15:08
heritageaction
Hi Jakob,
Can you please explain “danefæ” ?
😉