8.5: Selling 'Scrap Metal'


A typical scrap bucket, what unrecognised
archaeological evidence is lost here? 
Artefact hunting with a metal detector will in many regions find a large amount of modern (post 1950s) material in the ploughsoil. Artefact hunters regard it as responsible behaviour, having found it, not to return it to the arable land. Some throw it in the hedge ("hedge fodder") or leave it by the gate, both of which is just littering. Others remove it from the site totally and dispose of it safely elsewhere. When this concerns cow udder tubes, shotgun cartridges, ringpulls and aluminium drink cans etc., this is uncontroversial.

Other artefact hunters place in the 'scrap bucket' all items not wanted for their collection, regardless of age or nature, and regardless of whether they know what it is or not. Each metal object on a site however reached it somehow, and is a potential source of information on what happened on the site. A scatter of shapeless lead fragments is the result of some activity. Plotting them, collecting and analysing them may reveal a pattern  about past activity, but most artefact hunters simply throw them away and sell for melting down as scrap (or even themselves melt them into fishing weights for sale). Other items might be in the scrap bucket because the artefact hunter simply did not know what it was, and was unconcerned to think harder about it or research it.

There are keys in private artefact
collections, and how many lock
components? If you don't know
 what you are looking at, you
 cannot recognise it. 
The PAS database contains (14th April 2020) only 1369 unidentified objects among  1,492,100 recorded items. Yet on many larger excavations, some 60-80% of the excavated metalwork assemblage will be nondescript material of uncertain function. Other fragments require specialist knowledge to understand and identify. Quite obviously the latter type of material is not being picked up by collectors and there is the possibility that unidentified artefacts are ending up not only unrecorded, but also simply discarded or melted down for scrap.

This is of course totally irresponsible behaviour and simply damages sites and then compounds it by destroying evidence. An artefact hunter exploiting any site should be prepared to take on the responsibility to collect and archive material with all the contextual data, the significance of which is not always apparent at first, for later study. Care should always be taken not to discard archaeological evidence because it was unrecognised as such.


Tamara Kroftova comments:
"Once again, the ignorance and lack of education orf artefact hunters is leading to the removal and loss of - potentially - enormous amounts of evidence from the archaeological record. It should be the case that objects that are not recognised by the artefact hunter are retained for further study, but the majority are focused on immediate collectability and simply discard the rest. Ignorance is irresponsibility and leads to destruction."

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