7th September 2007, 09:14 AM
It seems there has been a generally positive response to this ambitious project to date. There are however a number of concerns I have before I can feel fully satisfied with the success of this project.
Firstly, where did the 250 or so metal detectorists come from? Did someone involved in the project personally vet them, were they all from respected and well known metal detectorist clubs? Were they fully briefed on the methodology and their responsibility to report all finds? Even if every single one of the metal detectorists was well known and trusted, projects such as this are an excellent advertisement for the more unscrupulous members of the hobby to come and pillage the site when the rally was over. How did the organisers prevent this from happening?
I am also concerned about how they were monitored in the field. With the high ratio of metal detectorists to archaeologists, FLOs etc. it would be very easy for the odd coin or brooch to âgo missingâ. With this in mind, I also need to ask why the number of registered finds was so low? â600 ishâ finds from 250 metal detectorists over three days works out as less than one find per detectorist per day. If I was detecting on a rally where so little was turning up I would be very tempted to pack up and go home. It seems surprisingly few finds for such a potentially rich site.
Please do not think this an attempt to denigrate what this rally was trying to achieve, or to have a go at metal detectorists. I have been involved in similar projects on a smaller scale with great success, and I have met and worked with plenty of excellent dedicated and responsible detectorists over the years.
The reason I ask is because of my own personal experience of a less successful such attempt, which I fear may have been repeated on a much larger scale at Water Newton. A few years ago myself and a colleague provided our free time to help a local archaeology group carry out a community field walking and metal detector survey of a field on the outskirts of a Roman town, providing finds identification advice and GPS surveying. It was my job to locate the detector finds by GPS, but after very little time it became clear that several of the detectorists were pocketing finds rather than bagging and marking, pretending they had not understood me when I explained that all finds were to be located and recorded. I had to ask several of them to turn out their pockets and give me what they had found - the result being dozens of finds being unlocated. When we found a very productive area of the field producing Roman coins aplenty, the detectorists converged on the area and pillaged the finds, forgetting the transects they were supposed to stick to. At the end of the day, we had to ask them to stop and get off the site, and had to wait around until they had all gone home, as several were hanging around waiting for us to leave. Even so, locals reported seeing them in the field the next day without permission. It appeared some of them had travelled several hundred miles to get to the site, for the express purpose of making some money it seems.
The project was an unmitigated disaster, and this was with no more than a dozen detectorists. I was not involved in the setting up of the project so I do not know how or where they were recruited, but it just raises some pertinent questions in relation to this recent project.
Firstly, where did the 250 or so metal detectorists come from? Did someone involved in the project personally vet them, were they all from respected and well known metal detectorist clubs? Were they fully briefed on the methodology and their responsibility to report all finds? Even if every single one of the metal detectorists was well known and trusted, projects such as this are an excellent advertisement for the more unscrupulous members of the hobby to come and pillage the site when the rally was over. How did the organisers prevent this from happening?
I am also concerned about how they were monitored in the field. With the high ratio of metal detectorists to archaeologists, FLOs etc. it would be very easy for the odd coin or brooch to âgo missingâ. With this in mind, I also need to ask why the number of registered finds was so low? â600 ishâ finds from 250 metal detectorists over three days works out as less than one find per detectorist per day. If I was detecting on a rally where so little was turning up I would be very tempted to pack up and go home. It seems surprisingly few finds for such a potentially rich site.
Please do not think this an attempt to denigrate what this rally was trying to achieve, or to have a go at metal detectorists. I have been involved in similar projects on a smaller scale with great success, and I have met and worked with plenty of excellent dedicated and responsible detectorists over the years.
The reason I ask is because of my own personal experience of a less successful such attempt, which I fear may have been repeated on a much larger scale at Water Newton. A few years ago myself and a colleague provided our free time to help a local archaeology group carry out a community field walking and metal detector survey of a field on the outskirts of a Roman town, providing finds identification advice and GPS surveying. It was my job to locate the detector finds by GPS, but after very little time it became clear that several of the detectorists were pocketing finds rather than bagging and marking, pretending they had not understood me when I explained that all finds were to be located and recorded. I had to ask several of them to turn out their pockets and give me what they had found - the result being dozens of finds being unlocated. When we found a very productive area of the field producing Roman coins aplenty, the detectorists converged on the area and pillaged the finds, forgetting the transects they were supposed to stick to. At the end of the day, we had to ask them to stop and get off the site, and had to wait around until they had all gone home, as several were hanging around waiting for us to leave. Even so, locals reported seeing them in the field the next day without permission. It appeared some of them had travelled several hundred miles to get to the site, for the express purpose of making some money it seems.
The project was an unmitigated disaster, and this was with no more than a dozen detectorists. I was not involved in the setting up of the project so I do not know how or where they were recruited, but it just raises some pertinent questions in relation to this recent project.