The metal detectorist who claims he is a girl called "Candice" who wants to examine and dismiss my concerns about artefact hunting has been silent for a while, but now wants to engage again in debate but wonders:
Hmmmm........where shall I start![that is apparently meant to be a question - secretaries just don't punctuate like they used to] Well, Candice, how about the posts about the ongoing thirteen million-quid shortfall between what the PAS records and what is pocketed? It is not just me that is saying this, we all know it's going on. Like here:
... what data we do get reported, which experienced detectorists visiting the museum where I used to work estimated (and there is no way to know) is perhaps ten per cent of all finds. That implies a lot just going straight into pockets.Jonathan Jarrett, 'Finding buried treasure and keeping it (quiet)' A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe, 21 October 2010. That seems a good place to start any discussion of how Britain is handling the "metal detector problem" - a ten percent success rate means a ninety percent failure rate. If England and Wales introduced a permit system tomorrow would ninety percent of "responsible detectorists" start breaking the law by searching without one? If so, what do they take the word "responsible artefact hunting' to actually mean?