Oswestry hillfort: keep off our pension fund!

This Sunday there’s a metal detecting rally just south of Oswestry. Not near the setting of the hillfort you understand, detecting is forbidden  there……

…. which is strange, as an archaeological report on the land reckoned: “The owners of Oldport Farm confirm that their land is often combed by metal detectors who informally report finds of musket balls, presumed to date to the Civil War period”. Often combed by metal detectors, eh? Yet now they’re banned. Pourquoi? Supply your own theory, but here’s mine: “someone” doesn’t want anything found that might put a spanner in the money-making works, things like important archaeological artefacts and evidence that might prompt talk of protecting the land from development!

You won’t have heard that from officialdom though. Not in their remit, see. Although, you might hear some of them quietly singing …
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.
Not that “someone” needs to worry that detectorists might mess things up. The Portable Antiquity Scheme recently admitted they think 70% of detecting finds don’t get reported to them and there’s no reason to think things would be different in Oswestry. Indeed, I refuse to believe that a bunch of detectorists who kept coming back often were only finding a few musket balls and nothing else. Unless they were all insane. Which I doubt.

However, getting permission to build houses in a scheduled monument’s setting involves attending to every detail, including trying to ensure no-one picks up (literally) anything that might ruin everything. Thus, it’s not just detectorists but human beings that are banned from the land and it’s worth noting there’s STILL a notice  about not stepping off the path because of chemicals. (Still? Really? Is this Chernobyl?)  As a result, we have this bizarre spectacle …..

A man from the BBC and the leader of HOOOH and the Director of the CBA wanting to inspect an important piece of land on behalf of the local, national and international public but being told to keep off all parts except those parts they have a legal right to go on (or perhaps it is saying “Keep off our pension fund”?!

 

[Image Credits: huwdavies.photo@btinternet.com and HOOOH]

Tele-hooligans repeat the Lenborough lie!

As the sunlight faded in last nights episode of Nazi War Diggers and the four participants visibly chafed at the bit to dig up a dead soldier, 7 dishonest words were spoken that were also probably used at Lenborough a year ago…..

An uncivilised person is someone who chooses to do what they want rather than what they should. That surely applies to the brigands in both Latvia and Lenborough, and indeed in Channel 5 HQ.  All of them falsely claim they acted in the public interest not their own and that anyway what they did was “legal”.

Unfortunately the latter claim is broadly true so it is to be hoped that the hundreds of archaeologists and other civilised people who will today be condemning what was shown on the telly last night will reflect that the primary blame, in both Latvia and Britain, lies in the laws that allow such things to be done. If so then something beneficial may have come out of it.

Update: Perhaps however no-one should hold their breath. See this, part of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists’ complaint to Channel 5:
“CIfA is concerned that the show did depict a style of ‘excavation’ that must have destroyed a great deal of potentially important archaeological information …….  and the apparent focus was on artefact recovery only”
…. Fine. Yet that’s a perfect description of the behaviour of thousands of British metal detectorists every single week and CIfA and most British archaeologists express zero “concern” about that.

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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting

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