by Nigel Swift
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There are a couple of deeply, deeply depressing things being said about the above, a FLO participating in a too-hurried (and therefore damaging) dig-out of the Lenborough Hoard and I don’t disagree with them.
1. Daniel Pett of PAS:
“There’s too much idealistic archaeological comment on this. PAS staff are at the sharp end.”
Fair enough Dan. No doubt the FLO wanted the digging to stop and no doubt there was a lot of ignorant pressure on her not to. Maybe she thought if she didn’t, they’d go ahead anyway, in an even more damaging fashion. Understandable. But why, why, why Dan has PAS spent 17 years outreaching yet there are still loads of uninformed selfish people out there constantly wrecking such contexts and you still haven’t told the Government something more than talking is needed?
2. Dr Gabe Moshenska characterises critics thus:
“its basically “Your working class hobby is spoiling our middle class hobby!”
Yes, Gabe, we confess that is indeed our attitude!! Our middle class hobby (and I had only an outside loo up the garden all my childhood – did you?) is conserving knowledge and we’re against knowledge being needlessly destroyed for lack of best practice. How the blue blazes are we wrong? (We’re also against that working class hobby of wild bird egg collecting. What about you? Are you a bit middle class about that but a bit working class about metal detecting?)
So it’s very depressing. So long as Dan and Gabe keep talking like they do, those detectorists who don’t want to co-operate with Best Practice can rest very, very secure that they won’t have to. Tomorrow we’ll offer a simple measure that would end the worst abuses in a trice. Will Dan and Gabe pop over to say “Yay, we’ll support that proposal 100%!” We’ll see.
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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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10 comments
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03/01/2015 at 10:11
p.abbott3@ntlworld.com
Wonderful,what a start to the new year ,and it was done under the good auspices of the FLO , dug by hand no JCB ,here ,you lot stick to desecrating graves found on building sites , and leave the important finds to us citizen archiaologists.
03/01/2015 at 10:27
heritageaction
Thank you for providing such vivid confirmation of the main theme of our article: there are large areas that outreach simply can’t reach and the Government needs to adopt an additional strategy, as we’ll suggest tomorrow.
03/01/2015 at 12:28
Edwin
Have been posting criticisms of the event, the methods of recovery and the rest of the nonsense in several places. Appalling TV coverage to see several hands picking at the coins. Surely arrangements of layers of coins is important to help discussion of whether they were saved like a money box or saved in a heap at one time, for example? As for the BBC calling it a “dig”!!!
08/01/2015 at 12:56
peter
Staffordshire hoardThe Staffordshire hoard has been bought by museums in the Midlands (Picture: PA)
The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon precious metalwork was found just four years ago in a field near Lichfield, in Staffordshire. More than 3,500 martial items made from gold or silver dated back to the kingdom of Mercia in the seventh and eighth centuries were excavated, with experts describing the hoard as of equal or more importance than the Sutton Hoo discoveries.
08/01/2015 at 13:39
Archyfan
Still waiting for an answer Peter. You are saying the method of retrieval at Lenborough was the FLO’s preference, not the detectorists’ one? Yes or no?
08/01/2015 at 19:58
Peter
Old Archyfany, Ive already put the answer to your question on a previouse post thats been taken off ,that’s when I was corresponding with the organ grinder not his monkey ..
09/01/2015 at 00:23
heritageaction
So what IS the answer Peter? You are saying the method of retrieval at Lenborough was the FLO’s preference, not the detectorists’ one? Yes or no?
09/01/2015 at 10:58
peter
http://www.weekendwanderersdetecting.com/INTRODUCTION/Calendar_of_Events/SAXON_HOARD_/saxon_hoard_.html
09/01/2015 at 11:11
Archyfan
Yes, but that doesn’t give an answer to the question does it Peter, as you must know very well.
So let’s try again in the hope you’ll answer:
You are saying the method of retrieval at Lenborough was the FLO’s preference, not the detectorists’ one? Yes or no???
09/01/2015 at 13:50
Edwin
How is scrabbling in a muddy hole an excavation? Were the coins in a building, buried in the open air, at the foot of a tree???