NOLA_Ken
Gold Member
- Jan 4, 2011
- 5,214
- 4,178
- Detector(s) used
- several, mostly Garrett
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
While I can certainly understand the desire to preserve sites where something of historical significance happened, such as battlefields, it needs to be understood that much of what has happened has no historical significance whatsoever. Just because people were there at some point does not mean a place holds the key to some new understanding of our history.
You talk of gaps in the historical record, but are there really significant gaps? True there are things we don't know, and things we'd like to know more about, but is the simple act of me going to an old homesite and finding some relics or coins going to ruin any chance of filling in that information? I doubt it. You mentioned learning more about the day to day life of average people, but what is there really that isn't known? We know how people lived because it's fairly well documented (as far as the post Columbus era anyway) we have first hand written accounts of day to day life in this country dating back practically to the very beginning of the settlement era. We know what things people used in their day to day affairs because we have plenty of surviving items to look at already. So with that in mind, what possible good can come of banning detectorists from vast areas on the chance that there might MIGHT be a few relics in the ground, when those relics really tell us nothing we don't already know?
In America we bulldoze our history like it's nothing, we as a culture seem to be almost in a race to destroy all traces of the past. Recently here in New Orleans a huge swath of Mid City was bulldozed to oblivion. I went to detect the area before it was buried forever under four feet of fill and a new hospital. A construction foreman I met there told me he had no problem with what I was doing but that one whole corner of the site was off limits because there was an excavation going on there. I didn't mind I still had acres to hunt and was quite content knowing that I'd never cover any real part of it in the limited time I had. A few hours later I was told I had to go because someone had complained. I have no idea what relics might have been found there, and now, no one will....probably ever. Now imagine if the site had been open for us to hunt until construction began.
Look through the finds that members here have posted and tell me how many of those would have contributed something significant to our overall knowledge of our past. You'll be hard pressed to find any. We dig the things we dig and preserve them for many reasons, some for profit, but profit really comes from hunting beaches for gold jewelry. When it comes to relics though, it's more a passion for history that drives us, or at least it is for me. So why shouldn't I be allowed to retrieve those things before the site is strip mined away for development or lost forever in some other way?
I think we need a better definition of what actually constitutes a "historic site". Gettysburg is a historic site.... a long forgotten home place in the woods is probably not.
You talk of gaps in the historical record, but are there really significant gaps? True there are things we don't know, and things we'd like to know more about, but is the simple act of me going to an old homesite and finding some relics or coins going to ruin any chance of filling in that information? I doubt it. You mentioned learning more about the day to day life of average people, but what is there really that isn't known? We know how people lived because it's fairly well documented (as far as the post Columbus era anyway) we have first hand written accounts of day to day life in this country dating back practically to the very beginning of the settlement era. We know what things people used in their day to day affairs because we have plenty of surviving items to look at already. So with that in mind, what possible good can come of banning detectorists from vast areas on the chance that there might MIGHT be a few relics in the ground, when those relics really tell us nothing we don't already know?
In America we bulldoze our history like it's nothing, we as a culture seem to be almost in a race to destroy all traces of the past. Recently here in New Orleans a huge swath of Mid City was bulldozed to oblivion. I went to detect the area before it was buried forever under four feet of fill and a new hospital. A construction foreman I met there told me he had no problem with what I was doing but that one whole corner of the site was off limits because there was an excavation going on there. I didn't mind I still had acres to hunt and was quite content knowing that I'd never cover any real part of it in the limited time I had. A few hours later I was told I had to go because someone had complained. I have no idea what relics might have been found there, and now, no one will....probably ever. Now imagine if the site had been open for us to hunt until construction began.
Look through the finds that members here have posted and tell me how many of those would have contributed something significant to our overall knowledge of our past. You'll be hard pressed to find any. We dig the things we dig and preserve them for many reasons, some for profit, but profit really comes from hunting beaches for gold jewelry. When it comes to relics though, it's more a passion for history that drives us, or at least it is for me. So why shouldn't I be allowed to retrieve those things before the site is strip mined away for development or lost forever in some other way?
I think we need a better definition of what actually constitutes a "historic site". Gettysburg is a historic site.... a long forgotten home place in the woods is probably not.
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