Incisive as ever, Professor David Gill says the 6 academics seeking to minimise Sam Hardy’s conclusions “may wish to reflect on whether or not their own position is endangering the finite archaeological record“. Quite. Their assertion that “unreported finds are not damage” is simply wrong and must be damaging because it will result in fewer artefacts being reported.
He also highlights that Dr Hardy said his work corroborates the detecting community’s perception that fields are eventually emptied of finds. Detectorists have coined their own phrase for it, “hammered sites”. For academics to tell amateurs there’s no harm in destroying a site and telling no-one what they find is remarkable.
We look forward to an early statement from PAS commencing with “upon reflection”….
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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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26/08/2018 at 18:27
Paul Barford
Another academic, also attacking the points Dr Hardy made about what his research showed about the scale of depletion of the archaeological record through Collection-Driven exploitation of the archaeological record, not only says its not damaging (using the same arguments as his foreign colleagues), but also non-reporting allegedly does not matter because an FLO admitted that 90% of reported finds do not make it to the PAS database, FLOs allegedly reject them ! I am waiting for the PAS explanation of that too.