Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Metal detecting is a unique way of experiencing the historic landscape, allowing many amateurs to access heritage hands-on in a way that would otherwise be impossible, locating and unearthing their own fragment of the archaeological record. With a conservative estimate of 15,000 people currently detecting in the UK, and 1,122,998 objects recorded to date (October 2015) on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database since its inception in 1997, England’s historic places are being walked, searched and mapped by a significantly-sized population whose enthusiasm would be better off integrated into heritage programming, than rebuffed by it and misdirected elsewhere. Achieving this would not only have potential financial benefits for the sector, where cuts are prevalent, but also see the kind of community engagement that is regularly discussed but not often arrived at. Research by the author has shown that the majority of metal detectorists operating in the UK are members of clubs or societies with a local focus; 86% of detectorists (club members, or independent) report that they detect close to home. With a strong attachment to their home area and a good understanding of local history, the conscientious amongst them have been searching the same area for decades, building up a unique resource of artefactual and spatial data that informs a complex milieu of perception. These detectorists generate a unique attachment to the landscape on which they search – producing links between their own experienced version of the landscape and their perceived version of how it was experienced in the past, thus creating a very particular type of place-making. This paper begins by setting out the phenomenological method and the implications of this for studying the perception of landscape, before using qualitative and quantitative data from the author’s research into the attitudes of metal detectorists to consider what this means for metal detecting within a perceived landscape and, by association, how heritage professionals might best approach the issue.
Below is a brief excerpt from the paper.Twenty-five years on, it has become clear to most that rather than targeting detectorists with polemic campaigns, the country’s archaeological resource would be better served if treasure legislation was improved and the metal detecting community was better engaged through outreach and education into best practice for recording, handling and conserving found objects.
And here is a table showing the factors that British detectorists want in a good metal detecting site.
Some of you detect on private land but most of us detect on public beaches, so the government is the landowner.
The study found that the relationship with the landowners is very important, followed by the quality of finds, having exclusive hunting permission, easy access, attractive landscape and privacy. I'm sure that most of you appreciate the same things.
And here is the first paragraph of the conclusion.
The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate that the metal detecting experience is incontrovertibly bound up in landscape – an artefact findspot is a special place, and 70 per cent of detectorists reported feeling attached to the areas where they detect regularly. Just as metal detecting is about more than simply finding buried treasure, so too is the detectorists’ attachment to landscape about more than just the potential for this. Instead, both are about the meeting of past experience and potential action, aesthetic preferences combined with local knowledge, and lastly, as our mudlark interview revealed, the acquisition of years worth of experience, environmental instinct, and getting ‘hooked’. As Ingold (1993: 155) asserts, ‘a place in the landscape is not “cut out” from the whole, either on the plane of ideas or on that of material substance’, but is rather an embodiment of the whole multi-sensory, perceptive experience of a particular locale. Consequently, by seeking to better understand the sense of place of metal detectorists, we can hope to gain a better understanding of their attitudes to the portable antiquities they find, and their heritage in general.There is a lot more of interest in this paper and you might want to read all of it. Here is the link.
This study shows an appreciation for detectorists and the need for archaeology to better work with instead of against detectorists. There are still many archaeologists in the US that are not as enlightened.
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The British have a metal detecting TV sitcom too. It is called Detectorists. I found a few clips of the show on YouTube and think you might enjoy watching a few yourself. I get more laughs from Oak Island though. Even with my dry wit coming from a heavy dose of British ancestry, Oak Island is funnier.
Here is one short clip of the Detectorists TV show.
If you can get through the commercials, watch the first segment of this one.
Watch Detectorists Online Free - Crackle
There are a number of short clips of the show on YouTube. Here is one example to get you started.
Detectorists - What you found - The best joke from the show - Bing video
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A recent study found that discontinued Lego sets have appreciated in value faster than gold.
Study finds discontinued LEGO sets better investment than gold (nypost.com)
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Here we go again. Very soon we'll be in a new year. Doesn't seem like its been a year since we did this.
I'll probably be going back over the year and some previous years. This year wasn't one of the most productive for the Treasure Coast beaches, but like always, there were some nice things found.
The surf is still small, and it seems like we'll have a warm end of the year.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net