goldeagle, thanx for posting that. I'm gonna check it out. In the meantime, I can understand the archie-mindset making such claims for historic monument type sites. None of us has any trouble with being forbidden to detect Bodie, Shiloh, or other such narrowly defined places that might someday get a few more 4 x 4 archie pits dug in/on them. The trouble I have, is that not only do some archies have a protectionist view on
those sacred spots, but perhaps on ALL ghost towns, EVERY park in the USA, or EVERY beach, demolition site, front lawn, whether public or private, etc.... There are some that ..... if it were left to them ..... no one would ever be allowed to detect, no matter how innocuous.
Lest you think this is an extreme that an archie would digress to, here's a true story: A fellow was detecting on a beach on the east coast (I forget if it was city, county, state, federal, or whatever). A lady-archie just happened by, and started griping that he couldn't be doing that. He said "why not?" and she blathered on about cultural heritage, archaeological rules, or some such rhetoric. The md'r replies: but I'm not finding old items/coins. I'm angling for recently lost jewelry and such. He shows her clad, pulltabs, etc... She was taken back by that response, and thinks for a second. Then she retorts: "Well maybe it's less than 50 yrs. old
NOW, but it will be historic 100's of yrs. from now, and you're robbing future generations of the ability to study their history!" Doh! True story!
The truth is, even the most aggressive well-funded university archaeology department, is scarcely able to dig a few handfuls of pits per year (each one is done meticulously, with paint brushes, tweezers, and massive paperwork). To completely comb a single park of just a few hundred acres, would take a million years!
The same argument of "leave it to the archies" was put forth in the arguments against Mel Fisher. In trying to claim he shouldn't have been retrieving the goodies (in their arguments to confiscate the gold & silver), they claimed that the job should have been left to state of FL archies. But Mel successfully counter-argued that ..... never in a million years was the state going to finance risky treasure hunts at the tax-payer's expense. So in reality, the site would have lain at the bottom of the ocean forever, if it were not for the private sector. And now of course, we see that this private sector organization has done more to preserve and promote the history, than the state would ever have done. I would say the same applies to on-land md'rs: quite often it's the private relic collector/digger market/niche that knows and preserves things. Look who's writing the button ID books, token collector books, bottle collector guides, etc.... Quite often archies turn to them for help in ID'ing targets
