Artefact Hunting and Archaeological Responsibility

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...

The archaeological record is a core concept of archaeology in the English-speaking world, yet one that is difficult to define adequately. Archaeology is in effect the academic discipline concerned with documenting and interpreting the archaeological record.  Inasmuch as the historical record is the body of written and other documentary material that forms the evidence for the creation of the historiographic interpretation of the past, the archaeological record is the body of physical evidence usable to create the archaeological interpretation of the past. Archaeological method and theory supply the normative means to allow interpretations to be made and assessed. The notion of 'archaeological record' is a cover-all concept for a set of material or physical traces that can be used as a basis for archaeological inference. As such, depending on the subject being investigated, it could range in size from, for example, a single hunter-gatherer's hearth and discrete associate...

Terracotta Nok statue in archaeological context Pangwari site, Nigeria.  Another basic concept is that of the archaeological context. The archaeological record is made up of a series of individual contexts.  The context  is the three-dimensional spatial patterning of layers, deposits and features, the individual artefacts and other debris on a site, their groups and relationships. In practice the term is used as a reference to being the 'context' within which a certain group of individual pieces of evidence (artefacts, ecofacts, etc.) is contained and the boundaries of which form the bounds of the association between them. Isolated objects, removed for example by artefact hunting, are decontextualised, they have lost those associations. The concept of association is crucial to an understanding of archaeological inference. The term provenance (or findspot) concerns a single artefact. It is an absolute (typically recorded with reference to an arbitrarily positio...

In talking about archaeological context we tend to think of it in terms of being composed of individual layers. These are discrete units of sediment, debris, rock, and other materials that form or accumulate as the result of natural processes, human activity, or both. In order to describe them and indicate their position on a site and in its sequence, these layers are generally numbered sequentially (with the lowest number being that removed first). An individual layer or deposit may be termed (following geological nomenclature) a stratum, and multiple layers are called strata. Therefore the study of their sequence is called stratigraphy (description of what we call the stratification). One of the simplest ways to depict layers is to depict them as a vertical sequence and this is frequently done in the form of a section (or 'profile') through them. Here is an explanation from Michigan State University 'Campus Archaeology' page "Archaeology 101: Reading strati...

The Havering hoard, a deposit of Late Bronze Age metalwork The term 'deposit' in archaeology can have two meanings, first as a general term synonymous with 'layer' and referring to something that has been physically deposited either by human or natural activity. In the narrower sense it can be used to refer to certain groups of artefacts or layers that have been 'deposited' (usually by human activity) within the archaeological record. Examples of these may include graves or hoards where something was put on or in the ground as the result of a single (and often intentional) act. Obviously, archaeological study of such deposits consists of more than just getting all the objects out of the ground as a group. Hoards The site under excavation, before the coins were found The Beau Street Hoard was a block of silver coins fused together while digging a site on Beau Street in Bath discovered in a small pit under what was once the floor of a Roman bu...