Thearos wrote on Dec 17
th, 2012 at 9:12am:
In the case of the UK, the change is very striking, between the love of the great public for archaeology (witness the Time Team programmes on television), and the very, very recent promotion of metal detectoring as a substitute. Witness the end of the Timeteam shows, replaced by "Hidden Treasures" etc, which are all about metal detectorism. How did this happen ? A few big finds by detectorists, and all the Timeteam approach (careful excavation, sample trenches, focus on context, on small objects-- e.g. broken pipes, etc-- as a way of recovering the past, often of the humble, e.g. railway workers, in very local settings) goes to naught.
yeah but any reasonable find has to be declared as treasure trove. The crown then takes it's cut and the finder does not get as much as he would have had he been able to put it up for auction.
As for it being my history. Well given the sheer immensity of history in the uk - honestly, I'm all for a small army of professional amateurs (they are doing it for money) scouring the country and digging up stuff.
We'll find a lot more sites and artifacts that way than with a tiny number of academic controlled sites.
And I'd prefer the law to simply say: 'finders = keepers'.
You'd actually get more finds declared that way as people wouldn't have to worry about treasure trove or their sites being taken away from them.
Give that most found artifacts are in the top 3 feet of soil due to natural movement caused the seasonal expansion and contraction of the soil. The sites themselves are rarely disturbed and remain deeper in the ground for subsequent excavation.
So let the treasure seekers have their treasure and they can point the academics at the larger deeper sites.
everybody wins
Sanction the grave robbers