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Date: | Thu, 2 Nov 1995 13:36:56 GMT |
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(In reply to your message dated Tuesday 31, October 1995)
I am sure that Brian Kenny is correct in his predictions about the way that a
book encouraging flint collecting would affect archaeological sites in the USA.
I also accept his points about the loss of data on intra-site patterning through
the wholesale removal of artefacts. However, can I just say that here in England
we have a huge problem with the destruction of archaeological landscapes through
agriculture. Flints and stone tools may survive but potsherds and metal finds do
not. I recently completed a survey of Anglo-Saxon pottery fabrics in the East
Midlands using museum collections, almost all of which were unsystematic and
composed very largely of material donated by amateurs. Within the space of three
years I was able to build up a database from which I could demonstrate the range
of pottery fabrics in use over about 1/8th of England from the Romano-British
period through to the medieval. If I had used only scientifically-collected
material I would not have had any data at all from vast parts of the study
region. As it is, I can now construct models of pottery distribution which can
be tested against new data and used in CRM. So, I would say that the main
problem with amateur collecting is the notion that the material collected should
remain in private hands. After all, many professional archaeologists started
their interest in archaeology as children. I certainly did (but the material I
collected is now deposited in Bristol City Museum rather than the attic of my
parents house or on a modern rubbish dump).
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| Alan Vince: Managing Editor, Internet Archaeology |
| Dept of Archaeology |
| University of York EMail: [log in to unmask] |
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