Opinions about metal detectors use...

patnor1011

There was something what I read about uk - that there is about 60-70% of artefacts, coins etc... which were found by people using metal detectors as hobby. My opinion is that somebody using metal detector cause less damage to "unknown" archaeological field than big digger or some simmilar machinery as we can see in this days - lots of new roads, housing estates and so...
If this will be somehow regulated archaeology can benefit from this people who are doing that in their spare time as hobby and not demanding salary - might be some reward can be possible alternative to ensure that these artefacts will stay here. Sorry for my english I am not from Ireland.
Thanks Pat

boneless

As far as I am aware, the use of metal detectors is illegal here... I believe the use of them is regulated under the National Monuments act. They constitute an electronic survey which requires a licence from Dept. of Environment.

I will try to look up the relevant section... unless Grimes can find it in UCD!!:p

Dr Strange

Quite correct, you'll need a special licence for using a metal detector in Ireland. I don't have the article here but am quite certain about this.

Fletch123

Tey are absolutely illegal when used by 'treasure hunters' in Ireland. However, sometimes license holders may be employed to use their detector on spoil heaps in case they can find any stray finds.

biologikal

Do you mean they are illegal to use on listed or noted sites of archeological importance, or illegal to use at all, anywhere?

What about their use by any ordinary citizen on the local beach? Is this illegal?

abccormac

The law says that you have to prove that you weren't using it for finding archaeological artifacts. Since it's impossible to prove that, they are effectively illegal in all circumstances.

biologikal

No disrespect to anyone whos posted replies to the OP, but it would be nice if some references could be supplied to back up claims.

Anyway, the paragraph that would concern me most in the Irish Statute Book regrading the National Monuments (Amendment) Act, 1987, would be paragraph 2 (1) b, which states regarding the use of detection devices:

"use, at a place other than a place specified in paragraph ( a ) of this subsection, a detection device for the purpose of searching for archaeological objects,"

However, since the National Monuments (Amendment) Act, 1987 fails to define what an "archaeological object" is, it seems that this would lead to interpretation, and I feel that prosecution of a person found detecting on a public beach would be very difficult indeed.

Dr Strange

biologikal wrote: »

Do you mean they are illegal to use on listed or noted sites of archeological importance, or illegal to use at all, anywhere?

What about their use by any ordinary citizen on the local beach? Is this illegal?

As it requires a special licence a "ordinary citizen" using one of these metal detecors in Ireland without having applied and successfully granted a licence is using it illegally.

The law says that you have to prove that you weren't using it for finding archaeological artifacts. Since it's impossible to prove that, they are effectively illegal in all circumstances.

Quite right.

Meathlass

Even to use a metal detector on a site you need a method statement and a good reason. In relation to the original OP, if you are on a greenfield site, obviously you are going to cause less damage with a shovel and metal detector than a track machine but it's all a case of scale. You've removed the artefact out of context so its archaeological significence is greatly diminished. I would absolutely hate to see a situation like in England where people are rewarded for destroying sites with metal detectors.

patnor1011

Meathlass wrote: »

Even to use a metal detector on a site you need a method statement and a good reason. In relation to the original OP, if you are on a greenfield site, obviously you are going to cause less damage with a shovel and metal detector than a track machine but it's all a case of scale. You've removed the artefact out of context so its archaeological significence is greatly diminished. I would absolutely hate to see a situation like in England where people are rewarded for destroying sites with metal detectors.

OK... fair enough
- so you will have tens of thousands archaeological sites here which no chance to explore them as there are no extra money to finance this.
- you will have most of them covered and burried forever with new roads, shopping parks, housing estates on them... - something simillar is going on on one of the most important of them The Hill of Tara and you can do anything becouse this roads and houses are more important for your politics than archaeology and history.

I thing that in England they did the right thing. Here we can only dream about what was here or how this was look like becouse finally we will never see that... Only new Dunnes, Tescos, and monumental and beautifull new mega-multistoreys car parks and loads of new roads...

Meathlass

patnor1011 wrote: »

OK... fair enough
- so you will have tens of thousands archaeological sites here which no chance to explore them as there are no extra money to finance this.
- you will have most of them covered and burried forever with new roads, shopping parks, housing estates on them... - something simillar is going on on one of the most important of them The Hill of Tara and you can do anything becouse this roads and houses are more important for your politics than archaeology and history.

I thing that in England they did the right thing. Here we can only dream about what was here or how this was look like becouse finally we will never see that... Only new Dunnes, Tescos, and monumental and beautifull new mega-multistoreys car parks and loads of new roads...

If you excavate a site you destroy it, simple as that. Yes you will get lots of information but to fully excavate Tara you would be left with a flat field. You can't fully excavate a site and preserve it at the same time. And you can't preserve a site insitu, without touching it, and gain any useful information. Nobody wants to excavate the vast majority of sites in Ireland. We are better leaving it to the future when they will have better less intrusive ways of investigating sites.

If an area is going to be developed than any archaeological material is excavated and the results published. So you don't have a situation where underneath the new road or Tesco is a site. It's not there any more. It's not true to say that the sites are buried and covered over. Sometimes when sites are found on new road ways or developments a decision is made to slightly alter the course to avoid it (usually for money and time constraints), this site is then left as it was. It will never be excavated. In terms of Tara I really don't understand the protesters. They want the road rerouted and the site excavated at the same time. There were two choices here (it's too late now to do anything , the site is nearly finished). Reroute the road and leave the site as it was, cover it over with topsoil and forget about it or do what they are doing now.

There are thousands of sites in the county and most of these are untouched every year. Roads actively go out of their way to avoid known sites, that's what the planning process is for. The vast majority of sites excavated on new road developments every year are completely unknown, have never been heard of before. Usually there is no surface trace of them at all in the landscape. These are a completely new discovery and we can get great information from these sites but it's a fallacy to say that we could preserve them. All you would be left with is a grass field.

Reconstruction of course is another matter entirely. Unlike in England we don't have the great Roman ruins or the huge walled Medieval cities (yes we have some, but nowhere near as many as the UK) Most of our sites are rural and were composed of earth; very difficult to reconstruct. I think the archaeological community has done a terrible job of explaining to the public the planning process and how archaeology actually works. Whenever my family come to see a site they can't believe how unimpressive it is, just a few holes in the ground, they say! Exactly what Lismullin is. Impossible to preserve as a museum piece or a interpretative centre.

patnor1011

Yeah... You are right and thanks...
I was only little bit dissapointed that I cant use my detector here. It was great fun to do that on other places - for example in my native country Slovakia. And there you must be very carefully when doing so. You cant just dig everywhere where you will get some signal and if then you must do it very very carefully becouse loads of ammunition from II WW...
When you will find anything you have to report that to our authorities...
I am simply missing that excitement and walks in country...

Hammered hippie

Many of the people here seem to interpret a vague law very strictly in order to protect archeological objects in their original context. It is very obvious that most of you have never seen or used a metal detector. Any metal detector (bar deep seeking 2 person operated industrial machines) do not detect any deeper than 30cm, honestly.
Nearly all fields in UK and Ireland have recently been ploughed, even grass land. So the top 40-50 cm is disturbed. That is probably why most excavations see the top layer stripped of. So the detecting takes place in a layer that is willingly discarded as being of no interest by most Archeologists.
Since the information fieldwalkers provide is usually welcomed by archeologists I fail to grasp the wrath against metaldetectorists. Provided metaldetectorists steer clear of archeological protected sites and excavations all that can possibly happen is that they provide archeologists with finds that survived the ploughing and possibly point them to interesting sites.Mind you that most of the fields in which metaldetectorists make most of their finds would have gone unnoticed by Archeologists if it had not been for the metaldetectorist finding artefacts in a soil layer that is of no interest to archeologists to start with.
Since archeologists themselves are the judge of what is archeologically of interest and therefore define what is an artefact of archeological value it can be said that every thing found in the top 30cm in a field is intially actually not an archeological find when found, unless decided so later. At least digging around in the top soil can not be regarded as hunting for archeological treasure. Sure, the archeologists themself regard that layer as useless. It could actually be seen as a good thing that metaldetectorist uncover artefacts from that layer before corrosion gets the best of them or the plough utterly destroys them.
Taking all above in consideration one wonders why many archeologists are so agressive in their stance towards metal detectorists that perform their hobby in archeologically unprotected fields. Is it that they have no clue as to what a metaldetector does and how deep it detects or are there other founded reasons to be afraid of the metal detectorist and his beeping ally.
As it seems that many of you in this forum are actually archeologists, or hobby archeologists, can you please tell me what bites you so much about a fieldwalker with a metal detecting device.
Mind you that it is my opinion that whenever something of interest is found it should be sent to the proper authorities. In the UK and the Netherlands this has led to a better understanding and appreciation between archeologists and metal detectorists. Moreover it has led to the discovery of many interesting artefacts (mostly out of context) but also some very interesting sites.

A.Partridge

Hammered hippie wrote: »

As it seems that many of you in this forum are actually archeologists, or hobby archeologists, can you please tell me what bites you so much about a fieldwalker with a metal detecting device.
...

Hi there,
Look I am neither a professional archaeologist or a hobby archaeologist, in fact I don't even know anything about metal detection either.

But to answer your question about 'what bites' archaeologists about field walkers looking for 'finds' I can only probably guess that it hinges around the whole issue of context.

Maybe I am wrong to assume this but is it true to say that field walkers using detectors are more interested in the actual objects they find, than the way of life of the people to whom the objects once belonged?

Seems to me that people who remove finds from a site deprive the rest of the population of an element that could help us to learn more about our ancestors and how they lived.

If that is the case then I can understand why archaeologists are a bit sniffy about items being removed from a site without due respect to the context.

From your thread here it seems that you are a very responsible person and that is to be admired, but surely you can see that for every person who acts as responsibly as you do that there must be lots who don't give a toss about the archaeological value of the site they are detecting and just plunder finds to which no-one will have future knowledge of let alone access to?


Just my 2c.