It’s not exactly hard to see, given the large number of detectorists and the relatively small percentage of people listed by PAS as “finders”, that an awful lot of detectorists – the great majority – don’t report all or even any of their finds and as such are knoweledge thieves who harm the rest of us.
So the fact PAS never says so makes PAS complicit and means our elected representatives are kept unaware of the problem. But WHY does PAS say nothing? Well, the broad answer is that PAS sees its own welfare as lying in not offending detectorists. Not that it admits it. But four years ago this week, just for a moment, it said so to its staff:
Tragic, isn’t it? For a good legal reason they insist their staff don’t criticise single individuals by name. Yet they are all perfectly free to criticise the thousands of unnamed detectorists who act just as badly. Yet they never do.
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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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9 comments
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26/01/2019 at 16:30
steveinluton
What is PAS? The article doesn’t explain to a newbie (me)
26/01/2019 at 17:57
heritageaction
PAS is the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a 20-year-old database set up by the Government to record details of all archaeological finds of a certain age. Your colleagues (and the National Council for Metal Detecting) will all stress to you that it’s only voluntary. We prefer to consider it compulsory on the grounds that not recording finds is immoral. The choice is yours.
27/01/2019 at 06:23
Paul Barford (@PortantIssues)
The fact that they will not criticise named metal detectorists is an odd contrast to the way some of their staff treat critics from the conservation lobby, verging sometimes on hysteria. These institutional double standards seem to me an issue that needs to be addressed.
27/01/2019 at 07:23
heritageaction
As you know, PAS employees, particularly management, have attacked the Journal over many years, always on the basis we are ignorant of the facts. However, the statistics are the facts and they show that detectorists mostly don’t report some or all of their finds and our two complaints are that fact and the fact PAS keeps that fact from the public and a succession of Culture Secretaries.
We feel PAS has no business attacking concerned members of the public who have every right to be resentful of the vast quantity of knowledge theft which hides behind their database. Not only do they never admit it but they never, ever use the phrase that matters most to the public and should be common parlance amongst archaeologists: mass knowledge theft.
31/01/2019 at 03:36
Ian Horn
The public generally could not give a toss about archeology, so called knowledge theft or even metal detecting, let alone feeling resentful about any of them. They are far too busy talking about Strictly, Ant n’ Dec or why we should be allowed to crash out of Europe. One in a thousand may have heard of the PAS but far fewer would know what it does… or doesnt do. They dont care if thousands of coins are sold on Ebay, or whether a motorway is ran through the middle of Stonehenge or if Archies and detectorists fight it out on social media of a Saturday evening. They dont care if we are right or whether you are right, it simply doesnt register on their list of important subjects. The phrase that matters to them most is not (nor ever will be) “mass knowledge theft”, it is “do you want fries with that?” That is why you have 10,000 followers of this blog, not 10,000,000. You dont matter to the vast majority of the public, i dont matter to them either and the PAS keeping facts from them doesnt even register on their top 10,000,000 reasons for feeling resentful. Britain is probably a worse place because of this, but sadly they wouldnt even notice.
31/01/2019 at 06:00
heritageaction
What sort of response is that to the reality of mass knowledge theft? There are very many people who DO care about archaeology and mass knowledge theft from Britain’s archaeological record, whether you’ve met them in your metal detecting circles or not. To say “no-one cares” is the moral equivalent of saying “if a shop cared about shoplifting it would try harder to prevent it – so it’s fine to do it”.
No. It isn’t.
02/02/2019 at 13:16
Ian Horn
I didn’t say “no-one” cares, I said the “public generally” don’t care and I stand by that. The papers are not full of articles about archaeology or metal detecting. The media in general are too busy presenting articles about celebrities and bad weather to cover minority interests like ours. (unless it is something spectacular like the recent chariot find and even then its on page 7) And that is obviously what the majority want to read/listen to/watch, or it wouldn’t sell. I will say it again, if the public generally were interested in your issues you would have 10 million followers, not 10 thousand. And the same goes for detectorists, I fully understand that. You do not speak for the public, neither do I. We both represent minority groups within the public. Unfortunately the public generally are too busy with important issues, like Kerry Katona losing weight and the Pepper Pig Effect. Whether we like it, or not.
02/02/2019 at 14:44
Paul Barford (@PortantIssues)
The public in general have a history of not really paying attention to concerns about a wide range of things, from freons, hedgerow destruction, whaling, rhino and elephant poaching, greenhouse gases, plastic bags, over-use of antibiotics and so on. They only start to fret when the effects of ignoring them kick in and the situation is on the verge of – or passes – the critical point of no-return. No doubt the situation is the same here. That does not make an argument for not raising the concerns, it does not make an argument that these concerns are unjustified.
https://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2019/01/conservation-does-not-matter.html
02/02/2019 at 14:47
heritageaction
Well, I can only repeat that however many care there is a large number of people who aren’t as lowbrow as you describe and who therefore DO care. In addition, every one in the country is deprived by mass knowledge theft, including posterity, and the fact it is committed by members of a hobby which comprises only one person in two thousand makes it even worse. So we aren’t about to be persuaded not to bother.