28th August 2013, 09:36 AM
Antipesto Wrote:Surely thats more of a case of misunderstanding what an HER is though, isnt it? It is not, and cannot be, a record of where the archaeology is - it is however, a record of where archaeology has, and has not, been found. Anything more than that, and frequent parts of that, comes down to opinion and 'experience' (often equalling guesswork)
Much HER data should be treated with a level of scepticism, depending on its source - overworked HER staff rarely have time to 'vet' submissions. Some data is entirely fictional, I recently had occasion to point out to a local HER that the finds reported by one metal-detectorist have a distribution suggesting that the given grid coords for a load of coins had been picked off a map and it looked suuspiciously like he'd just been using them to provide 'legit' individual provenances for a a hoard he'd found elsewhere which would otherwise have been Treasure - doubtless he's been selling them to Americans over the internet for double the money cos they've now got 'official' provenance backed by a governmental database they can check online. HERs, as with everything else, are there to be misused...
...and of course a lot of the stuff is just plain wrong...