Help BAJR and the PAS at Thornborough

[Paul Barford]

quote:Originally posted by BAJR Host

You are using words like Escapade..... and Salvage...air of legitimacy ....muddles through.....ad hoc.... and make a confused statement about Cambodian antiquities. First I find you choice of words... an insult to what I and the PAS are there to do... are you suggesting I am that incompetant? are you suggesting I just muddle through? I am ad hoc...

No, it seems to me, from what I have been able to find out this morning by contacting the PAS and CBA (Yorkshire Museums has not replied yet) after reading your announcement here, that this response is being put together in a very ad hoc manner. I had assumed from what you wrote earlier this was some kind of planned community archaeology project and the term "rally" was a slip of the pen/typing finger. Now I find it really IS an artefact hunting rally held in a very unsuitable location to which a response is only now being put together.

The PAS is not "there" just so that already overworked FLOs can work weekends too and service rallies. Each metal detecting participant at this rally is paying 45 quid for the pleasure and yet if we want archaeologists to come along and record the archaeological evidence that is being removed by them from this site, they have to do it for free pay their own expenses and most likely live in a tent. That is what I meant. As for "salvage", that is exactly what it is, archaeological evidence is being removed, and we cannot stop it, so all we can do is to go along as unpaid volunteers and salvage what we can while we can. As in "salvage excavations", "salvage recording". Except as mitigation of redevelopment, "salvage" is something we try to avoid doing these days. That is what I mean by an ad hoc response. Why not find a way of avoiding a recurring "salvage" situation in cases like this? This is not the first detecting rally ever to be held in Britain, and each time, the same problems crop up. Perhaps its time to resolve them in a more satisfactory manner. That's not "insulting" David, its asking a perfectly valid question about British ARM policy in response to a concrete and recurring situation.

The word "escapade" in my text above refers to the metal detectorists who want to come along to the "Stonehenge of the North" and take a little piece of the past from it home. If you and your BAJR colleagues ask them why they go to rallies you will learn I am sure that they are not doing it to gain or generate archaeological knowledge about one of the North's premier prehistoric sites, they are coming for entertainment and socialising and if they get a relic or two as a souvenir so much the better.

So what's the archaeological difference between archaeologists working with artefact hunters in Cambodia and Yorkshire? Where is what I presented for discussion a "confused statement"? A whole lot of collectors in the States will tell you that their collections of antiquities from Asia (for example) generate and "safeguard" archaeological information from damage. Just like metal detecorists in the UK say they are doing for British finds. In reality, they are part of the same phenomenon. It seems to me "confusing" the issue trying to pretend they are not.

quote: and I will report back about how it goes afterwards, rather than condemming beforehand

Good-oh. I for one look forward to seeing that. Though let's not be "happy" with a [u]partial</u> success. The needless erosion of the archaeology of this part of the Thornborough complex (by the removal of who knows how many artefacts from the artefact scatters forming the sole evidence of the ritual landscape around them) deserves more of an effective archaeological and ARM response than that.

You did not address the point I made about adequate funding of the state's response to artefact hunting (PAS) and people volunteering to work for nothing.

Paul Barford