Thursday 3 April 2014

Pockmarked and Depleted Archaeology



On a Welsh metal detecting forum near you, member "Chef Geoff" enlightens fellow metal detectorists (thread: Folks, Archeologists versus Metal Detecting......« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2014, 08:35:30 am) about the reasons why there is a conflict between artefact hunting and collecting and site preservation "which has nothing to do with jealousy".
The often recited old mantra of "we save history" is laughable at best we don't save history we dig up pieces of metal from history which are pieces of the jigsaw puzzle picture of history, for every detectorist who records ALL their finds over 300 years I'll show you at least 10 that don't so in fact we steal history by taking away parts of the full picture. I've been at one dig in particular which was on an upland Roman farmstead site where the Roman level was only around 7"-8" deep and the whole surface was pockmarked where a detectorist had dug through from above and removed finds from their stratified layer, so we need to educate ourselves, admit there are times we get it wrong and stop the "them and us" attitude.

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