How Can Egypt Protect Archaeological Sites From Destruction?

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Kent Weeks has a very well-presented piece in Newsweek called: Can Egypt Protect Its Ancient Monuments? which details some of the problems facing the country in the field of the preservation of its archaeological sites from damage and destruction. The text is well worth reading.

The archaeological sites of Egypt face many threats, one of the problems is that many of them sites are crowded into the same areas as modern activity, and the needs of looking after the legacy of the past have to be balanced with the present and future development of the country.

In truth, no one knows how many archeological sites are in Egypt: 5,000 is an oft-quoted figure, but other experts say there are many more. Some sites are tiny—graffiti scratched on a cliff face, or a small cemetery. Others, like Giza, cover several square kilometers filled with thousands of tombs and pyramids. Thebes (modern Luxor) boasts thousands of tombs, temples, shrines, and villages. The Valley of the Kings alone is chockablock with scores of elegantly decorated tombs, including that of the boy king Tutankhamun. Sites lie beneath the streets of modern cities, in fields along the Nile, in desert wastelands, and distant oases—even beneath the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. They span thousands of years and represent several cultural and religious traditions—Neolithic, dynastic Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. In Egypt, one is rarely out of sight of an ancient monument.

Unfortunately, it is no exaggeration to say that every one of them is threatened with destruction — and theft and vandalism are the least of the problems. The graver threats are more subtle: changes in the environment, such as increasing temperatures and humidity, air pollution, and rising ground water; the expansion of industries, farms, and cities into archeological zones; and, perhaps worst of all, the growth of mass tourism and the burgeoning infrastructure required to support it.

Wider public attention has been drawn in recent weeks to the problem of their preservation by the looting which has taken place. In the last week of January, police throughout Egypt abandoned their posts, leaving hundreds of archaeological sites unguarded. Political changes left the the Supreme Council of Antiquities rudderless and confused: "Gangs of armed treasure hunters took advantage of the chaos and began plundering ancient tombs and antiquities storerooms throughout Egypt. The robberies are ongoing and thought to exceed 400 incidents so far". While the looting of sites is just one of the problems facing the antiquities preservation authorities in the country, it is one that takes up a large quantity of the resources available for the task. Weeks then turns to the organization which is charged with looking after these monuments, he describes the arsenal of resources it has to do this as limited and somewhat outdated.

The SCA is a bloated bureaucracy. It employs 58,000 people; about two thirds are local security guards, poorly paid, untrained, and unarmed.
There are also between 20,000 and 30,000 Tourist and Antiquities Police, part of the Ministry of the Interior (not the SCA), who are posted at sites and museums most heavily visited by foreign tourists. Though a pervasive presence, they are an unreliable one, as demonstrated by their immediate and wholesale disappearance early in the revolution. Many still have not returned to duty.
The SCA’s on-site inspectors, who are supposed to administer and preserve the country’s heritage, are underpaid and unmotivated. Most are young and —for the first few years, at least— enthusiastic about their job. But the low salary and near-universal reluctance of their superiors to delegate authority leads to frustration. A large number leave to become tourist guides. Instead of taking 300 Egyptian pounds a month from the SCA (about $50), they can earn six or seven times that amount as guides.

Let us note that Week's figures suggest that there are some 60 000 people who are employed as guards, to keep looters off the sites. Collectors who say "more should be done" to protect sites from looters have failed to suggest where the finances to employ even 60 000 people at a reasonable salary, let alone the number that would be required to keep an even closer watch. Surely nearly all this money could be saved and directed towards conservation if dealers and collectors would simply stop buying artefacts without any questions establishing they come from legitimate sources, thus reducing dramatically reducing the incentive to loot sites for collectables that will find a buyer even if illicitly obtained.

Looking after archaeological sites costs a lot of money, everywhere. Tourists visiting monuments (though not all sites) generate income but:

the SCA is perennially underfunded, even though archeological tourism generates considerable income. In December 2010 ticket sales to sites in Luxor alone earned $30 million for Egypt. But [since tourism is one of the country's main sources of income] much of this money goes to the government treasury.

As Weeks points out, "almost every branch of government wants some control over that income and wants as much of it as possible for themselves, focusing only on short-term gain". The pressures tourism inflicts on tombs and temples is enormous, yet no long-term comprehensive management plan to protect them has yet been agreed upon. Weeks mentions the redevelopment of Luxor to generate more tourist revenue which I wrote about on this blog last year."The plan is already doing irreparable harm to many of Luxor’s monuments, demolishing historic buildings, paving over archeological sites, moving whole villages and thousands of Egyptians far away from tourist centers and ancient monuments. Many archeologists and tourists, as well as many locals, believe that these acts are turning the largest archeological zone in the world into a gaudy theme park designed only to make money in the short term". Weeks makes some recommendations for the future:

What should be done to protect Egypt’s monuments? Here’s a list on which most Egyptologists agree:

Consult with local and international agencies and specialists to develop and implement long-term management plans.
Train on-site inspectors and give them greater responsibility.
Design better security for sites and museums.
Allocate more money for site conservation and documentation.
Take a strong stand against commercial and political interests that threaten the monuments.

Egypt’s archeological patrimony is humankind’s as well, and requires urgent efforts if it is to be saved for future generations. Egypt’s revolution, and the energy of the youth that drove it, captured the world’s imagination and gave renewed hope for the country’s future. It would be a tragedy if this were not also translated into a renewed commitment to its past.

Let us hope the new government that will eventually be created in place of military law will set about creating conditions for this to be put into action. We can help, by creating conditions in which the trade in illicit artefacts from the looting of sites and museum storerooms and galleries cannot function. That seems the least we can do to help the Egyptians protect the archaeological heritage of that part of the planet's surface.

Smithsonian Ponders Ethics of Showing Treasures

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The Smithsonian has been planning to host an exhibition: “Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds", showing the contents of an Indonesian shipwreck discovered by fishermen off Belitung Island in Indonesia in 1998. The problem is that instead of being properly investigated in a multi-disciplinary project according to established methodology, this historically important shipwreck was commercially mined within a period of months by a commercial treasure hunter, and thus much of the information it might have provided about the ship’s crew and cargo was lost. This has been likened, even in the US, to modern-day cultural piracy (Kate Taylor, 'Treasures Pose Ethics Issues for Smithsonian', New York Times, April 24, 2011).

The exhibition was conceived by the government of Singapore, which owns the artifacts, and Julian Raby, the director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's two Asian art museums. It is on display in Singapore through July and will then travel internationally. Although the Smithsonian says it has not made a final decision, the exhibition — which includes glazed pottery, rare pieces of early blue-and-white porcelain and the largest gold cup ever found from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) — is tentatively set to arrive at the Sackler in the spring of 2012.[...] The ship, which is believed to be Arab, was filled with a cargo of ninth-century Chinese ceramics and gold and silver vessels. Its discovery suggests that Tang China had substantial sea trade with the Middle East; scholars had previously thought that the trade routes were primarily over land, along the Silk Road.

The company that salvaged the Belitung wreck, Seabed Explorations, is run by a German engineer, Tilman Walterfang, former director of a German concrete company who saw economic opportunities in wreck hunting in Indonesia.

when fisherman first discovered the shipwreck in early August 1998, the Indonesian government, fearful of looting, ordered Seabed Explorations to begin an immediate round-the-clock recovery operation. It started within days. Although Mr. Walterfang eventually brought in a pair of archaeologists, including one, Michael Flecker, who wrote two journal articles about the ship, Mr. Walterfang conceded that, from an academic standpoint, “the overall situation would without doubt be described as ‘less than ideal.’ ”[...] Seabed Explorations sold the majority of the 63,000 artifacts recovered to a company owned by the Singapore government, for $32 million [...] Some artifacts have ended up on eBay and other online sites.

On April 5th a group of archaeologists and anthropologists from the National Academy of Sciences — including Robert McCormick Adams, a former leader of the Smithsonian — wrote a letter to G. Wayne Clough, the director of the Smithsonian, that proceeding with the proposed exhibition would "severely damage the stature and reputation" of the institution. This opinion has been shared in recent weeks by the Society for American Archaeology, the Council of American Maritime Museums and the International Committee for Underwater Cultural Heritage, as well as groups within the Smithsonian, including the members of the anthropology department and the Senate of Scientists at its National Museum of Natural History.

The salvage firm's director Walterfang was dismissive of the exhibition’s critics, suggesting that the exhibition was being used as a “Ping-Pong ball in yet another political game for the social climbers in Washington, D.C.”. Archaeologist Flecker is reported as having argued that the "purist approach of many archaeologists" is simply

not practical in developing countries like Indonesia, where governments are poor and the risk of looting is high. In those circumstances, he wrote, archaeologists and commercial salvagers should cooperate “to document those sites and the artifacts recovered from them before too much information is lost.”

So a bit like an underwater Portable Antiquities Scheme then.

It will be interesting if the Smithsonian decide today not to host this ethically-questionable exhibition. If the haste and unmethodical manner in which they were excavated in our times is a criterion disqualifying Treasures from being exhibited in a proper museum, what are we to say of the hundreds of hoards and other finds hoiked out of the ground in Britain by metal-detector wielding treasure hunters? I wonder whether the Smithsonian will be seeking opinions form the British Museum and their Portable Antiquities Scheme and treasure Unit about their ethical dilemma?

Let's see if the Smithsonian allow a little thing like ethics to interfere with their exhibition plans.

An announcement on whether or not it will proceed with the show is expected in late May.

Another Antiquities Storeroom Looted by Armed Gang in Egypt

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Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:

Armed looters broke in to the Tel El-Dabaa antiquities warehouse on Thursday, stealing artefacts and breaking several pieces of the stored collection. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Administration of Antiquities of Alexandria and Lower Egypt, said the warehouse was used to store artifacts found at Tel El-Dabaa's archaelogical sites by Dutch and German excavation missions over the last 30 years. They include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay pots and amulets.

I find the use of the term "warehouse" highly annoying here. What are being robbed in Egypt today are not "antiquities warehouses". A warehouse is where items destined for sale are temporarily held by merchants. What was broken into here is a storeroom of material from an ongoing archaeological project being archived for future work and research, not selling off to collectors eager to get their hands on their own private little "pieces of the past". In stealing this material, robbers are hindering - or removing any possibility - of using that material to write a public past. The results of decades' work by groups of dedicated people is being trashed overnight by these raids.

Now I really do not accept what one British artefact collector and propagandist for the artefact trade recently suggested, that this looting is a "a cry of frustration from the poor and dispossessed" desperate acts "of the forgotten underclass" against their government. Forgotten underclasses do not carry guns and anaesthetics to render guards unconscious. Forgotten underclasses in most parts of rural Egypt can barely afford a donkey. What we see in Egypt before our very eyes is the early stages of the development of networks of illegal activity involving antiquities, due entirely to their value (real, or perceived) on the antiquities market. The current political instability in Egypt is allowing them becoming bolder and will lead to them becoming better organized into criminal networks. Then foreign collectors and dealers will be happy as there will be lots more ancient Egyptian antiquities on the no-questions-asked external markets, and they can all make a heavy profit from helping to finance these new organized criminal groups in their free-enterprise emptying of the fragile and finite archaeological record onto the commercial market.

We have seen this before, most notably in eastern Europe in the political instability caused by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. We have seen how the international antiquities market has profited, and continues to profit from the illegal activities of artefact hunters in southeastern Europe (Bulgaria in particular) and now - as that source dries up - in other regions of the former eastern bloc (such as northwestern Russia and the Baltic states). We saw the same thing in Afghanistan then Iraq. Dealers and collectors deny this process took place and deny their responsibility for helping fund it, let us observe now the same thing happening in post-Mubarak Egypt. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that none of the pro-market collectors blogs or forums open to public view have expressed any real concern about this looting, why should they when they are obviously silently waiting for the artefacts to start flowing onto a market near them?

For those who cannot place Tel El-Dabaa, this is the site of some really very interesting and modern excavations on what is thought to be Avaris, a central place in the Hyksos realm and in the story of the rise and functioning of the New Kingdom but also - some would argue - having its place in Biblical history as well. The dealers and collectors who will be handling the artefacts stolen from this storeroom in their efforts to pursue a vision of a "people's archaeology" (sic) through the collection of random decontextualised artefacts of specific type are not dismembering history stolen just from the Egyptian people, but from us all.

Photo: Tel El-Dabaa, the future site no doubt of criminal organizations' artefact mines to tap the ample resources offered no-questions-asked by the international antiquities market. History for all becomes a blank, a looted site and a handful of collectable geegaws in a Chicago suburban back room.

Egypt Looting: the Callousness of Collectors on Show

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On hearing the news of the looting of museums and archaeological sites in Egypt, antiquity collector Candice Jarman writes:

Returning to the present troubles - sadly, some of the 'radical archaeologists' must be rubbing their hands with glee.

I consider that to be highly insulting to all those who care about the preservation of archaeological sites and monuments (and not just because I am named in that post). Many of us are wringing our hands in utter despair to imagine the wanton destruction and dismantling of monuments and collections to serve an ever-greedy and undiscriminating market.

Zahi Hawass this evening put his feelings like this:

My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities.

The people who may well be "rubbing their hands with glee" would be unscrupulous no-questions-asked dealers and collectors anticipating another windfall of looted material to come onto the market, like after the looting of archaeological sites in Bulgaria and then Afghanistan and Iraq. I cant see anyone like that dedicating their lives to protecting anything, except their own interests.

On an Early Medieval Cemetery Trashed in Croatia

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I was notified about this by Richard "Sheddy" Lincoln, UK metal detectorist who has on many occasions shown himself to be a notorious trouble maker. His motives notifying me are as clear as his for putting it on his Facebook page (a few American history activists on there who would be very interested ... and bloody outraged!). Here's what he wrote there (note no name given, no indication which Museum was involved - or not):

From a friend in Croatia. He's a metal detectorist who does things the right way; for him it's about the recovery and preservation of artefacts from damaging non-contextual layers - i.e. ploughsoil and area's about to be developed. He has... an extensive record of every identifiable item that he has recovered and has written a few reference books to assist others in identification of finds. Here's what he has written about these finds:

Some of you will have been to Nuštar, the village where I do most of my detecting. Well they are making a new soccer field next to the park. they had scraped the surface level and i planned to go on when the freeze let up. Meanwhile, they dug the foundations for the stand and found a lot of regular dark shapes. They turned out to be g...raves. Instead of informing the museum or quietly bulldozing them, they told the mayor of the village who got the graveyard workers to dig them (this is of course illegal). they dug fifteen graves and cleared the goods out before I got to hear about it. I asked the workers and site officails what they had found other than bones and they said they thought the grave was from the first world war or just before. I insisted on seeing what was found and was directed to the Chapel of Rest in Nuštar cemetery. All the bones from the graves were mixed together in binbags. I asked if they hadn't informed the museum and was told the museum wasn't interested. Then I saw that they had a plastic carrier bag with some bronze objects. I was amazed to see that they were Avar culture, from the 7- 8th century. I photographed the material, then took the decision to inform the museum, or at least ask if they had heard anything.

The archie I spoke to couldn't look me in the eye of course, and I got the feeling that the museum knew, but were turning a blind eye. I handed over the photos, so now they have to move on it, but we'll see.

These are the remains of steppe nomads (like the mongols) who came here in the 6th-8th century. That large piece is actually a belt end. Now I know why the buckle is hinged, it's so the belt end can be passed through.

This story went up yesterday on a metal detecting forum. In reaction a metal detecting inarticulate called "simonthesearcher" ("trying to be a Valued Member") ejaculates: Disgracefull,,Barford,if your reading ,nice one,lets hear what you got to say about this then . It is unclear why he addresses his "nice one" comment to me.

Well, this metal detecting "friend" in Croatia turns out to be former soldier Steve Gaunt (Cibalia). In November last year Mr Gaunt was in court because of some conflict with the staff of a Croatian museum about his metal detecting. ("charged me with the misdemeanor of failing to inform the authorities of finding items of cultural value. I will be fighting even this minor charge and am well prepared for my day in court. It's an important day for Croatian detectorists!"). I missed whether the verdict has been announced.

It would be interesting to know whether the museum which is the subject of this complaint which Mr Gaunt is now egging his British metal detecting mates to publicise for him is the same one with which he is currently in conflict. It would be interesting to know more about the background to this.

As for Mr Gaunt's comment, while the material is of Avar style, there is no "steppe" in Nuštar, these belts were a symbol of being part of a certain lifestyle, and - in themselves - are no more ethnically indicative than the fact I am writing this in Levi's bluejeans. This Kossinnist fixation on ethnic labelling of artefacts is however common in the artefact-collecting world.

Mr Gaunt's 'Ex Preteritus' website is interesting and clearly deeply influenced by British justifications for hoiking it all out. It purports

"to be a register of accidental antique finds from the Danube region of Hungary and Croatia [...] Developments in farming technology and the growth of chemical use means that many unknown sites and artefacts are in great danger of completely disappearing before they are discovered. Items that have laid in the ground for a thousand years or more quickly deteriorate after they are disturbed and action must be quickly taken to save them.
At Ex Preteritus, we try to register finds from possible ancient sites under risk, usually recovered artefacts from the topsoil that would otherwise be destroyed. We also attempt to register casual finds made by individuals. This site features items recovered from plough soil all over the region. None of the artefacts came from registered or protected sites, or have been dug out of archaeological layers, but come from the surface of ordinary ploughed land.
Hopefully, these artefacts and coins will be of interest to the local museums of the region and we encourage them to make contact regarding the items catalogued on this site.

This artificial fertiliser argument is the usual standby for British detectorists too and - despite what artefact hunters and their supporters claim - has no basis in verifiable fact. The website may be an attempt at creating a 'register' of what he and his mates have found, but not a single location is given for the findspot of any of the items illustrated. That and asking (in English, not Croatian) museums to contact him if they see anything they fancy (rather than the finder reporting them) may raise a few eyebrows, and is not really what I would consider as "doing things the right way". Also I note that Mr Gaunt has several Avar style belt fittings shown on the website - obviously he has no problem with them being recovered by metal detecting, only when taken out of the ground by somebody else.

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Truth and deceit About the Antiquities Market

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In a text called 'The truth about the antiquities trade....' an antiquity dealer is - not surprisingly - quoted as saying:

"Barford[']s assertion that the trade is huge and large
numbers of antiquities are changing hands every day is wrong."

The text was written by Candice Jarman, a secretary in Bournemouth whose credentials for making such assessments about the antiquities market are stated to be that he is neither a metal detectorist or dealer but has some "friends' who are metal detectorists.

Jarman claims that the number of antiquity dealers is exaggerated in the literature about the subject. Reference is made to an earlier post of mine talking about an antiquity collecting forum's "good dealers" list by Ernie Krumbein which I suggest readers look at to examine "the workings of the antiquities trade [...] at first hand". It is of course not intended to be even a partial list of all dealers in the western world and Near East.

Then attention is turned to eBay.

Today (4 January 2011) at 21.19, there are 5,120 results for antiquities listed

A search just now shows the number of items on sale on ebay to be 20,229 results found in "antiquities" and a further 27,588 results found under Coins, ancient:

Replicas & Reproductions (701)

Byzantine (1,390)

Celtic (277)

China (4,366)

Greek (3,900)

Islamic (1,134)

Medieval (1,369)

Persian, Indian, Asian (2,296)

Roman: Imperial (8,985)

Roman: Provincial (1,563)

Roman: Republic (674)

Other (673)

Let us subtract the 701 replicas and reproductions and the books on offer. It is still a substantial number on sale on any one day. The spread of portable antiquities on sale on eBay is similar today:

The Americas (2,114)

Byzantine (466)

Celtic (313)

Egyptian (1,727)

Far Eastern (514)

Greek (1,320)

Holy Land (522)

Islamic (972)

Near Eastern (540)

Neolithic & Paleolithic (973)

Roman (5,064)

South Italian (316)

Viking (577)

Reproductions (1,452)

Price Guides & Publications (156)

Other (3,237)

There is a "slight" difference between the number of 5,120 artefacts claimed to be on ebay last night and the number (more than 40 000) that anyone can find a few hours later. Either there has been a lot of mid-week nocturnal activity by ebay dealers all over the world, or somebody is misleading their readers. I invite mine to check the links above and decide for themselves which set of numbers is the closest to reality on a given day.

The apologist for the trade goes on to suggest that the trade does not matter because "many of the items listed are n't even old, let alone ancient". Indeed, as is well-known, there is a lot of fakery, misrepresentation and scamming going on on Internet sales sites generally and many people buying simply cannot tell the difference between real and fake in antiquity buying. That does not mean however that there is NO trade in genuine looted and legitimately sold artefacts going on through these venues. What the indiscriminate trade of such items does show however are the numbers of buyers willing to obtain stuff without asking any questions about its precise origins. I was discussing the degree that fake artefacts are being represented as genuine on eBay - there was a lively discussion of this (based on statements being made by Charles Standish) well before blogger Candice Jarman came on the scene to brighten up our lives.

Let us also recall that there are other venues for the sellers of dugup antiquities, Trocadero for example and the portal run by ACCG President Bill Puetz, V-coins on which today 148 dealers in ancient artefacts ("5 more Coming Soon") are offering 108,221 Items, mostly coins and dugup artefacts with a total value of $21,929,580. This is not to mention those who contact potential clients through collectors' forums such as Tim Haines' "Yahoo AncientArtifacts" discussion list, Forum Ancient Coins or the several dedicated to putting buyers of uncleaned bulk lots of artefacts and coins in touch with those that stock them. Or there are many freestanding specialist websites and even YouTube videos selling bulk lots.

Returning to the topic of ebay, Candice Jarman also mentions what UK metal detectorists sell there and dismisses it:

most of what is listed is dross - fragments of this-and-that, corroded discs (coins?) and debris and lots of indeterminate metal crap which may or may not be old. If you took most of these to your local museum as finds, then they would probably tell you politely to go away and stop wasting their time.

Candice-not-a-metal detectorist obviously has not read what the PAS FAQ says. The PAS can confirm or deny this, but I do not think it is normal FLO policy to tell members of the public coming forward with items they have found to "go away and stop wasting our time", even politely.

Now it is true that some metal detectorists in the UK may make up a job lot of partifacts which are not archaeological (which rather depends on how you define that of course) artefacts per se. In other words they are not the sort of thing the PAS generally record on their database. Such items ARE however recorded on the UKDFDatabase in some considerable numbers. These Old-Timey pieces are saleable because collectable. Candice however is missing the point, these items are the equivalent of the duplicate coil or headphones a metal detectorist may offer for sale, they are the items they have dug or picked up in the fields which they recognise they can make a few quid on and do not need for their own collections. The best stuff they keep for themselves or take to a specialist dealer (many of whom hang around commercial artefact hunting rallies to make finders an offer). The fact that Old-Timey items are being offered for sale does not mean that archaeological finds are NOT. On this blog I have highlighted a number of egregious cases, I am sure any day's search of British sellers on eBay will reveal many more. Confirmation of this is only a few mouse-clicks away.

As far as UK metal detecting is concerned, the large numbers of PAS-recordable archaeological artefacts being taken from the soil has to be accounted for. Either they are entering metal detectorists' collections, or are being sold to other collectors, or they are being discarded. In the majority of cases this is happening without any record being kept of where the objects came from, what they were found with, and what subsequently happened to them. No amount of "it's not that bad really" special pleading can change that. It is a problem that has to be addressed.

The fact that metal-detected Old-Timey partefacts and misrepresented items and outright fakes are brazenly sold alongside unreported archaeological finds on the Internet does not make the removal from the soil and collection or sale of the latter any less of a problem. No more than the fact that many drivers who get behind the wheel of a car after drinking alcohol have accidents on the way home makes accidents caused by idiots Driving Under the influence... a less serious problem.

The reader of this blog can decide for themselves whether the antiquities market is "much smaller and much less active" than the indications suggest. Perhaps after looking for and through the evidence themselves, they might look at who is making the claims minimising the extent and damage caused by the no-questions-asked market. They can then consider what interests the latter have in presenting it in this way rather than joining calls to clean it up and make the whole process more transparent and accountable.

Again it is clear that the lead should be being taken here by the PAS, informing the public and policy makers about the issues surrounding the current form of the international trade in antiquities.

Vignette: when the PAS start talking opely and frankly about ALL the archaeological issues related to their "partnership".

British Archaeology Dropping the Ball

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A few weeks ago I published here a text about two documents connected with British "metal detecting" that had fallen into my hands. They showed with utmost clarity that significant decisions were being made between the author of one of them and a TV producer from a commercial station about how British archaeology is being presented to the public on prime time TV and how this was not being consulted outside the two special interest organizations concerned. I was of course unable to post the actual texts of either document here, but I felt I had to discuss what I see as the implications of these two associated texts and the questions they raise.

These questions of course - like much else related to "metal detecting" in the UK and the PAS - remained without an answer, none of the bodies of the archaeological establishment (RESCUE for example, grounded on public opinion) took up the argument. The topic was absent on the CBA discussion list (like much else), the BAJR discussion list without any further enquiry flippantly dismissed the whole story as fabrication. The organization concerned obligingly denied that there had been any such agreement reached with the TV company and pointedly ignored the postings here about it.

The way the legislation is framed in the United Kingdom makes archaeology very much more dependent on public opinion than in many other countries. For this reason, surely it is very important that we should be very careful how archaeology is presented to the public. It is on the basis of what they pick up from the media (rather than professional publications) that the wider public forms an opinion on what archaeology is, what kind of archaeology Britain needs. This is especially important when more and more elements of the system existing a few years ago are being shed under the umbrella of the financial state the country is in and the necessary cutbacks. Who is going to protest the loss of an HER somewhere if most of the people in the area have no idea what it is, what it does and that they ever had one?

It seems to me that British archaeology needs to establish a long term and detailed strategy which then is periodically re-evaluated, and above all that archaeologists should all be "singing from the same song-sheet".

After all the survival of the discipline is now more than ever before dependent on the type of public support it gets. If the British public see archaeology as a legitimate scholarly discipline with a specific methodology and needs and also things to say then archaeology will have more of a chance being funded as such by crowd-pleasing (vote seeking) policy makers. If the public is convinced that the whole aim of archaeology is to fill cases with golden goodies then there will be no pressure for the government to cut back more and more on the bits of archaeology not connected with golden-geegaw-finding with metal detectors. Of course that means British archaeology first itself deciding that it is NOT about just finding Treasures with metal detectors.
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