{"id":6737,"date":"2013-11-08T19:07:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T19:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=6737"},"modified":"2013-11-08T19:07:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T19:07:45","slug":"heritage-journal-ed-vaizey-insults-every-archaeologist-and-heritage-professional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=6737","title":{"rendered":"Heritage Journal: \u2018Ed Vaizey insults every archaeologist and heritage professional!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Heritage Journal has reported on the scale of the offence taken by archaeologists and others following Ed Vaizey\u2019s \u2018salute\u2019 to \u2018all the responsible metal detectorists\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heritage Journal writes:
\n<\/span>Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said yesterday:\u00a0\u2019I salute all the responsible metal detectorists \u2013 true heritage heroes \u2013 whose patience and unceasing curiosity do so much to bring this treasure to light\u2019.<\/i><\/p>\n

Rescue News (The British Archaeological Trust) tweeted promptly and succinctly:\u00a0\u2019Absolute rubbish. Heritage heroes are the people who look after our heritage \u2013 not those that seek sordid profit from it. True \u2018heritage heroes\u2019 are museum staff, local authority HER Advisors, the thousands of volunteers at local societies & academic researchers \u2026 As well as archaeologists, conservation officers, curators and conservators.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n

Ed\u2019s remark echoes the one by his predecessor David Lammy, which caused massive offence (but it\u2019s so much worse now against the background of redundancies and vicious funding cuts). He needs to be better briefed. We have to tell you Ed you got it horribly wrong. We\u2019re big fans of archaeologists and heritage professionals (loads of study and dedication and a terribly low level of remuneration \u2013 what\u2019s not to like?) But we\u2019re less keen on artefact hunters \u2013 all of them have too many pockets and a lot of them have too much interest in money and not enough social conscience (while the precise opposite of all three are pretty much the defining traits of archaeologists, both professional and amateur).<\/p>\n

And no, defining some of the artefact hunters as \u2018responsible\u2019 does\u00a0not<\/span>\u00a0make them praiseworthy! Archaeologists are responsible. People who run conservation websites are responsible. Bus drivers are responsible. So what\u2019s special about these detectorists? They report their Treasure Finds \u2013 fantastic! But that\u2019s just complying with the law like the rest of us do constantly without being hailed as heroes. And don\u2019t forget, unlike almost anyone else in Britain they get massive rewards for doing so!<\/p>\n

As an example of one of Ed\u2019s heroes let\u2019s go to the top \u2013 the poster boy of the Treasure Act, the finder of the Staffordshire Hoard. Truth is, he was indulging in his hobby, simple as that and got lucky one day. And for that he and the farmer got paid the annual salaries of 200 archaeologists. So he needs no deification \u2013 indeed if the role of that finder is to be highlighted at all then the number of days he kept digging and piling the stuff on his kitchen table without contacting the authorities shouldn\u2019t be brushed over should it? Fair\u2019s fair if society is going to make him a millionaire, eh?<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s like this Ed. The treasure finds are great and, to mouth a platitudinous truism, \u2018if it wasn\u2019t for the finders we wouldn\u2019t have them\u2019. BUT \u2013 and here\u2019s where you need to concentrate and take wider advice than you have evidently been getting: to say as a consequence\u00a0\u2018treasure = good ergo artefact hunting = good\u2019<\/i>\u00a0is simplistic \u2013 nay childish \u2013 and certainly wrong for it completely conceals the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

You should consider why PAS was set up 15 years ago. It was NOT because it was felt\u00a0\u2018artefact hunting = good\u2019<\/i>\u00a0. PAS was tasked with outreaching to, educating and persuading artefact hunters in order to mitigate the malign effects of what was universally seen as a damaging activity (which it still is \u2013 see the<\/p>\n

?’?Artifact Erosion Counter?’?). It was not set up to partner, promote, encourage or expand the activity \u2013 those are perversions of the intended purpose \u2013 as are statements by two Culture Ministers saying metal detectorists are heritage heroes. The hope expressed in the Commons in the debate that set up the Treasure Act:\u00a0\u2019I trust that we will now join the great majority of other civilised countries in passing a law to protect our rich and important heritage of portable antiquities\u2019 has yet to be fulfilled by a single molecule. It isn\u2019t even regulated for goodness sake. Talk of heroism isn\u2019t going to help.<\/p>\n

Finally, Ed, consider this: no foreign Culture Minister talks like you and no other country is clamouring to legalise an army of artefact hunters so they can unearth their own treasure items \u2013 responsibly, heroically or any other way, even though it\u2019s a cert they\u2019ll all have them. No, marvellous though some of the treasure is, it comes at far too high a price and every other country knows it does (your previous claim, that PAS is probably the envy of the world has simply no basis in fact. You really do need to get better briefed \u2013 whoever let you get photographed metal detecting a while back \u2013 when PAS employees have always made darn sure it doesn\u2019t happen to them has rather let you down! Here\u2019s a little calculation for you that is likely to have been made in other countries but hasn\u2019t been put to you: how far would the one thousand treasure items found each year stretch if each artefact was lined up edgeways? A yard or two? The artefacts dug up and mostly not reported since PAS began would stretch 11.75 miles. Now, what was that about heroes?<\/p>\n

PS – we\u2019ve sent a link to this article to Ed. If you need to have a word with him his email address is\u00a0vaizeye@parliament.uk<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

See the update at<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n

For Vaizey\u2019s original comments see<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n

Heritage Action article<\/span>: LINK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Heritage Journal has reported on the scale of the offence taken by archaeologists and others following Ed Vaizey\u2019s \u2018salute\u2019 to \u2018all the responsible metal detectorists\u2019. Heritage Journal writes: Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said yesterday:\u00a0\u2019I salute all the responsible metal … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6738,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6737\/revisions\/6738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}