A Detectorist's Guide To Field Archaeology

During the research and writing of this series, I have so far read, skimmed or glanced at more than two dozen academic works, ranging from full-length hardbacks to brief online papers, all on some aspect of field archaeology.

- Steve Webb

The publishing date for every title was post-1970; the most recent going on sale in 2010. Yet in none did I find any mention of metal detectors as being useful aids to fieldwalkers. It felt to me that the authors were hermetically sealed in a 1960s (or earlier) bubble that allowed them to totally disregard the availability and the widespread successful use of detectors in bringing huge numbers of losses and discards from centuries past to the light and scrutiny of the present day.

It used to be the case that professional archaeologists could justifiably claim that untrained field-walkers were incapable of accurately recording find spots when trowelling up coins and artefacts lying loose in the soil. Nowadays, of course, technological advances with smart phones provide detectorists with an accurate GPS app that pinpoints every recovery successfully achieved. PAS records validate what I’m writing here, as well as confirming the willingness of detectorists to record their finds on the database.

It must be abundantly clear to everybody, that field-walking with a detector and an accurate GPS system on any land that is not a scheduled ancient monument, and for which the detectorist has the landowner’s permission to search, provides an enormous costfree benefit to everyone’s knowledge of the past. Huge areas of land remain unsearched, and very many have locations crying out for detector surveys, as I hope to show in what follows.