"Metal Detecting: Destroying the Past"

[Jim Leonard]

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‎"Just look at American Diggers with it's professional relic hunter Rick Savage. Profit is all there is."

Well if Michael B. Barber watches this American Reality show and thinks it's real, he shouldn't put a Ph.D. by his name unless it stands for "Philosophy of Dumbass" Mr. Barber would rather have these items left in the ground to rot and to waste away to nothing. If that were the case, we would have nothing to show for our American and English Heritage. So much has be "Recovered" and "Saved" for others to see by the use of metal detectorists, much more than any archaeologist could hope to find and hide away in some dark vault.

Pure jealousy. That's all it is. Archaeologists have always been jealous of the fantastic finds we've unearth while they sit back in their comfortable chairs and sketch out a few doodles on their yellow sheeted note pads. They're always wondering "where can I get my next grant?" We don't need no "stinking" grants. We get permission and we hunt. And we find it, display it and love it. They, on the other hand, could care less and dispose of, YES, they sell duplicate items or sell any item to the highest bidder.

The paper is working a rebuttal article to present the other side of the story. If you want to provide input, contact them at editor@smithfieldtimes.com

[brian.w]

Yea to true, well said digger

[moparado]

Who or what lit a fire under that guy's ass?
No doubt this Ahole is pushing for some type of metal detecting regulations on private land seeing that some of the best sites are on State/Nat'l Park land already off limits to metal detectoring.

Those relics will not only corrode to nothing in due time in addition to urban sprawl development contractors who would relegate most relics to rubbish that is if they were even spotted in the payloader's bucket and would be lost to history forever.

His comparing ancient bronze arifacts on other continents is also BS IMO. Metallic artifacts here in the States are a few hundred years old at best not hardly comparable to thousands of year old relics found in other countries.

What is it with these 'regulation happy' pompus-ass zealots lately?

[Captainpugwash]

What would these people rather do, have metal detectorists remove them or let nature and chemicals introduced by man destroy them.