In the light of the frequent designation of artefact hunters as "wannabe archaeologists" (sic) it is quite instructive to see how some metal detectorists see archaeologists. For example
"Top Commenter"Joe Woods is apparently addressing me, writing (January 16 at 9:51pm): You are a total jerkoff. If no one pays you to excavate you just sit in your hole in the wall and bitch while others (metal detectors) are finding history before its lost to time and degradation.
Hooray for artefact hunters, eh? Heritage heroes 100%. Oddly enough, not all archaeologists are "paid to dig" - some get paid to teach, others to keep records, some to analyse material from other people's projects, others work in heritage administration. Artefact hunters are not so much "finding history" by their unregulated and unmethodological hoiking, they are obliterating it. As David Knell points out in reply to him, "
Objects that have already survived hundreds of years are unlikely to be "lost to time and degradation" any time soon. That's just a rather feeble excuse to grab them". Hear hear. Meanwhile one
Stephen William Sylvia opines (
January 17 at 8:25pm):
If I had to guess I'd say Mr. Barford is probably an archaeologist, a field of endeavor inspired by English "adventurers" robbing Egyptian tombs of countless millions in precious artifacts. The ad should have shown Indiana Jones ripping off the bling.
Mr Sylvia, who urges
knowing US history, guessed the "endeavor". He's not so good on the history of the origins of the discipline though, or the nationality of the first egyptophiles.
