Artefact Hunting and Archaeological Responsibility

Front Matter banner/title page:  Archaeology and Responsible Artefact Collecting Introducing Tamara Kroftova Contents 1.0 Introduction   1.2: What is "Responsibility"?   1.3: The Problem   1.4: About this Resource   2.1: What is archaeology?   2.2: What archaeologists study   2.3: 'Digging Up Old Things' is not Archaeology   2.4: 'Collecting Old Things' is not Archaeology   2.5: Some Differences Between Archaeology and Relic Collecting   2.6: Artefacts and Archaeological Context   3.1: The Archaeological Record   3.2: Archaeological Context   3.3: Archaeological layers   3.4: 'Deposits'   3.5: Archaeological Sites   3.6 Topsoil Assemblages   3.7: Cultural Landscapes   4.1 What the archaeological record looks like in the Ground   4.2: How The Archaeological Record Forms   4.3: Worm Sinkage   4.4: 'One-Layer sites' 5.1...

While the main texts here were written by archaeologist and archaeoblogger Paul Barford , some of the texts below are additionally commented upon by guest blogger Tamara Prava-Kroftova, the estranged half-sister of the more famous Lara Croft. Both grew up fascinated by archaeology, but while Lara went on to engage in artefact hunting as a Tomb-Raider, Tamara married and wrote her doctorate on the 'The Methodology of Archaeological Research: The Didactic Aspects' and now lectures at the West Ukrainian University of Volodymyr-Volynsky. Tamara sometimes may sound harsh, but in fact is only saying what every self-respecting British archaeologist should be saying, and should have been saying all along, about the idea of responsible collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record. Unfortunately I could not find a British archaeologist willing to take part in this project and had to look to the centre of Europe to find one to uphold professional standards and values. ...

What price a piece of the past in your hand? ( Photo: eBay ) For some time now in Britain archaeologists, artefact collectors and the media have been talking of "responsible artefact hunting" (often in the form of "responsible metal detecting"). The resource, arranged in the form of a blog, is about this concept. What is responsible artefact hunting? It is argued here that this should be seen above all from the point of view of avoiding damage to the archaeological record. The Code of Best Practice for Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales  sets out some of the basic principles, and in its fourth section it says that "being responsible means ...finding out about archaeology". Obviously the artefact hunter cannot take responsible decisions by perceiving the potential archaeological effects of their activities without that understanding. The 'Code' itself however, cannot help gain that understanding. It is formulated merely as ...

"Responsible Artefact Hunting". The underlying message in the current partnership in the UK between heritage professionals and artefact hunters is that when it is done responsibly, the latter can provide useful information for archaeologists while avoiding damage to the archaeological record.  This however raises the question of what "responsible artefact hunting" actually is. What does 'responsible' mean in general? Dictionaries give definitions of responsibility  that read something like: 'a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable to someone for something or being responsible for one's conduct' and the antonym irresponsibility (irresponsibleness): 'a form of untrustworthiness; the trait of lacking a sense of responsibility and not feeling accountable for your actions'. It might be worth considering how the term operates in some of the common collocations: 'responsible dog ownership', 'responsible d...

Unlike the situation in most countries, the collecting of archaeological artefacts is not illegal in Britain. It is claimed that current policies "provide an opportunity for individual finders to demonstrate how, if undertaken responsibly, artefact hunting can add value to archaeology, and lead to a better understanding of the past" (Fischer 2016, 3). In general, however, artefact hunting has long been seen seen in most other parts of the world as a negative phenomenon  'the looting that is ravaging the material remains of the ancient world [...] there is an increasingly profitable market in archaeological antiqui­ties, a market which threatens to undermine future research and the dissemination of its findings to the public. Unless checked, archaeological plunder today may well destroy our ability to inform ourselves and future generations about the past' (Miller in 1982). As Elia put it in 1997: 'Archaeological sites, the material remnants of our human...

There are a great deal of muddled messages coming out of the British archaeological establishment about collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record (usually, inaccurately and narrowly, termed there 'metal detecting'). The British Museum has called artefact hunters 'citizen archaeologists' (e.g., British Museum 2016 Annual Review ),  British newspapers tend to call them 'amateur archaeologists' (e.g., Akbar 2014, Lockhart 2017, Freeman 2020), the fashion has spread of calling all artefact hunters 'responsible detectorists' (sic), where if you go deeper into it, the term really means all and any artefact hunters that do not break the (rather liberal) laws of the land. But very few of these make any reference to how the archaeological record is treated by these people, and what archaeology is and is not. Although there is plenty of material in the literature in Britain (on paper as well as online) on these topics, because of its quanti...

This resource sets out what may be considered responsible artefact hunting in connection with the collection of archaeological artefacts in the United Kingdom. Since the texts are rather extensive, and go beyond what is, apparently, the only existing definition of the concept of "responsible [metal detecting]", for clarity this section offers an overview of the aspects covered here. The introductory section (texts 1.1, 2,3 and 4 above) briefly introduce what the term "responsible " means and briefly introduces the source of the conflict between the needs of artefact hunting and those of the preservation of the historical environment and the archaeological record. Here "responsible artefact hunting" can only be one that would take into account that the archaeological record should not be selfishly consumed to serve the needs of an individual using it for a single purpose (as a repository of collectables) but should take into account its other potential u...

Archaeological research   as a process There are many possible ways to define the subject and object of study. This is the definition of archaeology used here: Archaeology is the study of aspects the human past through the documentation and analysis of physical remains and traces, their associations and contexts, by the methodology of archaeology and dissemination of the results and conclusions. 1) " The study of aspects of the human past ", The past might be very remote, from the Lower Palaeolithic, where it may intercalate with palaeontology (but archaeologists don't do dinosaurs), to almost the present day (periods when other but not all aspects of the past are amply documented by other sources), 2)  " aspects of the human past ", many areas of the human past are arguably beyond the reach of even the most creative of archaeological thought, 3) " through the documentation ", the archaeological evidence does not exist in a vacuum, curran...

In this brief film, Dr Dragana Mladenović discusses what archaeologists study, and mentions a few ways in which it obtains dates: Part of an online course made by Southampton University. [ click on link ] https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/portus/6/steps/310478

The suggestion sometimes heard that artefact hunting and archaeology have in some way 'common aims' in fact basically means that the people espousing this view (some unreflexive UK archaeologists included) consider that this common aim is nothing more than 'digging up (interesting) old things'. But that is the aim of bottle dump digging Trash dump trashed Bottle dump digging is not archaeology, any more than bird-egg collecting was ornithology. Tamara Kroftova comments : "The idea that one can find reflected in much archaeological discussion of artefact hunting that what is important is having access to objects is simply a naive and unreflexive denial of what differentiates archaeology from mere Treasure Hunting".

One sometimes meets the opinion  (including from some unreflexive UK archaeologists) that collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record and archaeology have in some way 'common aims'. This basically means that the people espousing this view consider that the aim of both is nothing more than 'collecting and contemplating (interesting) old things'. Archaeology is (should be) more than mere antiquitism. The objects do not form the object of study in themselves, that is a separate field of study altogether -  material culture studies . Artefact collections are also not a good way to curate archaeological material . For the scientific community, then, a non-profit, self-perpetuating museum is considered the safest depository for archaeological collections. With the passage of time, important artefacts in personal collections may lose their importance. When they are traded and sold without supporting documentation, they become nothing more than curios or ...

A collection of Ozark arrowheads In archaeological research, the evidence has to be gathered systematically, according to a research design. It cannot be gathered in a random manner based on subjective decisions on what will be rejected and what will be taken under consideration. This is in contrast to collecting (of any kind) where objects are selected from a bigger group on selective grounds, when often other items of the same type are rejected. The issue of the difference between archaeological approach to what constitutes archaeological evidence and what is the type of thing collectors seek and collect is one that is often ignored in calling artefact collecting 'citizen archaeology'. Ancient Resources antiquities dealer Antiquities collectors tend to be interested only in acquiring only a small range of item types to build up their collection illustrative of the past. The world's cultures of course involved the everyday use of a vast range of object typ...

The difference between Currants, Raisins, and Sultanas To use the analogy mentioned above a currant cake is a cake with currants in it. But the cake is not composed, or even given its texture and flavour by those currants. The one on the left is a  Woman's World Lemon and currant loaf  while the one on the right is  Gluten Free Apple and Currant Cake (http://thefatmancooks.com/) . In the bottom pair, the one on the left is Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Currants and on the right a bowl of Morroccan curry . In this analogy, the currants stand in for the loose artefacts, the cake is the context  of which they form only a part.  It is not the currants that give the context these cakes their specific nature, but the combination of the components of the matrix (context), without which a currant is just a currant. And if you made a pile of currants picked out of these two cakes, you'd not know whether the cake they'd come from was the apple-fl...