Corfe Castle! What an ironic place to hold part of the Festival of Archaeology.

By all accounts, it was a great event. “Closing event is AMAZING at Corfe – ancient crafts, X Box Minecraft(!) storytellers, heritage orgs & archaeologists everywhere answering questions“.

But the problem wasn’t the event, it was the venue. So far there have been about 20 commercial metal detecting rallies there and the implications are clear: as early as 2013 one of the participants said: “Finds were seriously reduced up there anyway this year because its had us on it for twelve years and finds dont get replaced.”

No, they don’t, so to hold a pro-archaeology event just there was like holding a security conference in a house that had long been stripped bare. Did the event make that clear or is it just us?

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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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