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Archaeology and private artefact collecting have complex and inextricably linked histories. Archaeologists have long drawn attention to criminal activity among collectors, but to assume that all private owners of cultural material--and any archaeologists who interact with them--have ill-intent or engage in illegal behaviour can cause as much harm to the archaeological record as the criminal actions themselves. Keywords: responsible stewardship, artefact collection, professional archaeology, Introduction Most of the world's significant museum collections are the result of the activities of private collectors. Early archaeological expeditions purchased artefacts for museum collections to complement material from their [...]

SIAN JONES & THOMAS YARROW. 2022. The object of conservation: an ethnography of heritage practice. London & New York: Roudedge; 987-1-138-65567-6 paperback 35.99 [pounds sterling]. The object of conservation is [...]

Avocational metal-detectorists can be defined as finder-collectors. Many of them curate objects which they legally own. Some finder-collectors have private collections or even home museums consisting of thousands of objects, varying greatly in age. In this article we give a voice to finder-collectors by discussing the results of archaeological object interviews, an initially ethnographic method where the finder-collectors talk about a set of specifically chosen objects while engaging with them during the interview. Many finder-collectors touch and caress their objects while talking about them. It is clear that the physical act of handling the objects is an emotional process for them. According to our findings, most collected objects have a story often possessing an emotional and mnemonic character. Hence, certain objects can awaken memories from the time when they were found by their present owners; they can relate to a specific find site with connected memories of smells and other sensory experiences. And when these objects are curated or displayed these senses come into motion again. The objects in these collections might also possess imaginative stories from a more distant and mythical past, created by their present owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology and material cultural heritage enjoys a particular status as a form of heritage that, capturing the public imagination, has become the locus for the expression and negotiation of regional, national, and intra-national cultural identities. One important question is: why and how do contemporary people engage with archaeological heritage objects, artefacts, information or knowledge outside the realm of an professional, academically-based archaeology? This question is investigated here from the perspective of theoretical considerations based on Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere theory, which helps to describe the connections between the centre and peripheries of professional archaeology as sign structures. The centre may be defined according to prevalent scientific paradigms, while periphery in the space of creolisation in which, through interactions with other culturally more distant sign structures, archaeology-related nonprofessional communities emerge. On the basis of these considerations, we use collocation analysis on representative English language corpora to outline the structure of the field of archaeology-related nonprofessional communities, identify salient creolised peripheral spaces and archaeology-related practices, and develop a framework for further investigation of archaeological knowledge production and reuse in the context of global archaeology.

In his paper ‘Quantitative analysis of open-source data on metal detecting for cultural property’, Samuel Hardy suggested that permissive policy is ineffective in minimizing the damage done to cultural heritage by non-professional metal detecting. This response paper contests the basic assumptions upon which this analysis is based. While Hardy‘s comparative, quantitative approach is laudable, it is founded in a biased and simplistic outlook on the metal detecting phenomenon.

We warmly thank Pieterjan Deckers, Morag Kersel and Joe Watkins for their responses to our debate piece. As our views align closely with those expressed by Deckers (2020), we welcome [...]