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Officials seize 27k artifacts looted by a single French treasure hunter
- Danieru 6y ago> As Daniel Boffey notes for the Guardian, using a metal detector for anything other than scientific research is outlawed in France. Oh wow, there must be a big story behind this law. How could something so mundane as a metal detector be banned? The article says he "stole these from sites", is that implying he went to active dig sites or public attractions? There is so much to unpack here. Are ground penetrating radars also banned?
- cygx 6y agoCf https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/journals/opar/2/1/article-opar-2016-0014.pdf.pdf https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/journals/opar/2/1/arti... [PDF] for some background on the law.
- rasz 6y agoSame BS law in Poland. No one bothers to look for stuff, but if you happen to find anything you are automatically a criminal.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNo, if you do it for personal profit. Its not unreasonable for the rules to be something more than the playground "Finders, Keepers". Grow up. Further, Poland has one of the highest rates of metal detector usage.
- rasz 6y agoWe perform a lot of other illegal activities, doesnt change the law. (Ustawa z dnia 23 lipca 2003 r. o ochronie zabytków i opiece nad zabytkami (Dz. U. 2003 Nr 162 poz. 1568) defines metal detector usage a felony, 2018 amendment makes it a crime. https://histmag.org/Wykrywacz-metali-nowe-prawo-w-Polsce-a-poszukiwania-zabytkow-16283 https://histmag.org/Wykrywacz-metali-nowe-prawo-w-Polsce-a-p... TLDR: illegal, ~100K people do it anyway.
- jacquesm 6y agoBut something being illegal is actually incentive to give it a shot in Poland, this is ancient tradition. At least since Soviet Bloc times and quite possibly before then. Nielegalny translates roughly as 'must be interesting', or so I'm told ;)
- rasz 6y agoPre 1989 under Iron Curtain pretty much _everything_ was illegal. Any activity not aligned with primary party goals and thinking lines had some paragraph attached to it. It all stemmed from the "mother country", Stalins Russia. As Beria used to say "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime". Thats Lavrentiy Beria, head of Secret Police under Stalin, and the father of Katyn massacre - murdering 22K Polish military officers with a shot to the back of the head and burying bodies in a forest mass graves. The Death of Stalin (2017) is a lighthearted movie showing the tragedy, farce and terror of living under Soviet rule.
- jacquesm 6y agoPoland in 1986 was quite different from what it is today. I don't know how old you are but I remember it quite vividly.
- rasz 6y agoI do remember 1986. Ubiquitous queues and ration stamps for petrol, meat, sugar, chocolate, etc. Teacher telling us to report if parents say bad things about people on TV. Oranges once a year for Christmas from Cuba. Lego Technics set worth several salaries after my father smuggled half a car of crystal glassware to East Germany. Hardly any good memories.
- jacquesm 6y agoThere were good things too: stronger friendships, lots of creativity, less crime (not counting corruption, which was rampant), less drugs. But yes, you're absolutely right, lots of things were quite terrible.
- namenotrequired 6y agoReally? Is there no chance to report the find legally?
- jeltz 6y agoYes and no. You can report finds and get a reward in most countries but you might risk incriminating yourself at the same time in countries where metal detectors are banned. If it is a one off you are fine, but if you go around finding tons of coins all over the country and reporting them it will look suspicious.
- rasz 6y agoSure, you can report it and there is even a reward, but only if you found something accidentally without searching for it. For example farmer dragging stuff up with a plow, or builder digging a well. Reporting a find with metal detector is a crime with up to ~$100K and 2 year prison sentence, or up to 8 years if experts deem you destroyed something by accitend. https://www.adwokat-prawo.com/post/nie-legalne-hobby-poszukiwanie-zabytk%C3%B3w-wykrywaczem-metali-w-polskim-systemie-prawnym https://www.adwokat-prawo.com/post/nie-legalne-hobby-poszuki...
- lodovic 6y agoIt really doesn't matter if anyone bothers to look for it. If it's on public land, it belongs to the state. You're also not allowed to chop down a tree or dig a hole.
- jansan 6y agoYou surely means it belongs to society.
- jeltz 6y agoThe reason is assholes like the guy in this article. Metal detectors are banned in Sweden too and I am all in favor of that law.
- yostrovs 6y agoI would rather historically interesting objects that don't belong to anyone be unearthed and return to humanity, be they owned by an individual or a museum. Otherwise they continue degrading under the surface, and what good is that?
- flagrant 6y agoThe whole point of these laws is to ensure that interesting objects return to humanity. When an individual digs up an object and keeps it, it has not returned to humanity. Furthermore, information about the object, such as its location and condition is irretrievably lost. If an object cannot be responsibly recovered and catalogued then it should remain in the ground until it can be.
- yostrovs 6y agoYou imply that an individual is not part of humanity so that only museums, usually governed by the state, create the illusion of humanity. I disagree. The Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution destroyed nearly the entirety of Chinese historical objects. What was saved by unofficial groups or individuals became Chinese history. I'm just glad the Jacobins are not totally in charge in France, as they would think it better to just melt the finds into useful metal.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y agoThe issue is that jackasses don't document their finds. Context in which you found something is as important, if not more, than the item. Not to mention idiots destroy archeo sites because they are interested in trinkets they can sell rather than history itself. There is a reason why you don't dig up the entire site but rather put in a few trenches after noninvasive research.
- mulcyber 6y ago> How could something so mundane as a metal detector be banned? Obviously it's not... The actual law says: "Nul ne peut utiliser du matériel permettant la détection d'objets métalliques, à l'effet de recherches de monuments et d'objets pouvant intéresser la préhistoire, l'histoire, l'art ou l'archéologie, sans avoir, au préalable, obtenu une autorisation administrative délivrée en fonction de la qualification du demandeur ainsi que de la nature et des modalités de la recherche." [Code du patrimoine Article L542-1] "No one can use material allowing detection of metal objects to look for monuments and objects which can interest prehistory, history, art or archeology, without having, beforehand, obtained an administrative authorization delivered depending the qualifications of the applicant and the nature and modalities of the search." So basically you cannot use a metal detector to do illegal archeological search. This law is weird though, since it actually condemn the intent and not the act. I'm no lawyer but I'm guessing it's pretty hard to condemn anyone with this law since anyone thoughtful enough can hide his intent (or at least prevent producing any proof of such intent). https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000006845775/ https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
- Daniel_sk 6y agoBanned to use for searching artifacts - this is a common ban across EU countries. It's the same in Slovakia. You can buy a metal detector, but it's illegal to use it for this purpose.
- Aeolun 6y agoWait, he went around different sites all around two countries digging this stuff up, and officials were surprised he didn’t turn it over to the state? Nobody could be bothered to retrieve these artifacts in the first place. I don’t see how the state has (or should have) any more inherent right to them than this guy. The least they could do is pay him for the objects. Apparently they’re worth 700k!
- nsajko 6y agoNo. There are two issues: the artifacts are not just treasure - scientifically their context (in the ground and in time) is what matters, the context the treasure hunter removed them from. I.e., he prevented scientists from ever being able do the digs themselves. The other issue is that, AFAIK, scientists often prefer to leave parts of sites intact for future research, presumably hoping for better technology in the future.
- yostrovs 6y agoNo one else wanted to dig this stuff up. He didn't "prevent" anyone from doing anything.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y agoThey denied anyone in future from digging it up (or not doing so, noninvasive archeo is a thing). I'm both surprised and not to find such selfish arguments as yours here.
- samizdis 6y agoThe UK has similar laws, requiring people who find things defined under the Treasure Act 1996 (except in Scotland) as treasure to report their find to a coroner within 14 days. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996 Finders have to offer the treasure for sale to a museum/similar at a price determined by an independent panel. The UK also has broader, older rules governing "treasure trove", with slight regional variations. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove The bottom line isn't "finders keepers", but rewards are fair and often handsome. The rules try to strike a balance between public interest/education, common good, and providing an incentive against individual greed.
- preciz 6y ago“This is a clear message to those who, for the benefit and selfish pleasure of a few, rob us of our common heritage and erase entire swaths of our history.” There should be a better process to legally report the items or exchange them for market value so this wouldn't happen in the first place?
- huhtenberg 6y agoThis will only serve to entice treasure hunting, which is an inherently destructive activity.
- jansan 6y agoIt does not have to be destructive, and a swarm of amateurs could achieve much more than those lazy ass ivory tower archaeologists if a good framework of rules existed.
- nsajko 6y agoThe goal of science is to obtain knowledge and, in this case, learn more about the past and someone's heritage; not to loot.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoNot really. Archeological digs aren't just scooping dirt and sifting out objects. It's a careful process that pays as much attention to the ground being dug as it does to individual items, because surroundings provide clues about the object's provenance. A "swarm of amateurs" with profit motive will not care about any of that.
- yostrovs 6y agoHow is it destructive if before the treasure hunter there was no treasure and now there is one? Things underground degrade with time so finding them helps to preserve them.
- oefrha 6y ago
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoAm I understanding this correctly that the place he “looted” from was the ground? As in he found and dug up coins? And this is so heinous an action that metal detectors are banned?
- jeltz 6y agoYes, because if you remove treasures from their context we you often destroy an important archeological site. Many European countries do not want looters to destroy their heritages and windows into history.
- 1996 6y agoSo they leave valuable shit in the ground, and act all offended when someone uses an "illegal" metal detector? Aint gonna work!
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoInteresting. There seems to be a major cultural difference on this. On the one hand, the argument is that individuals collecting artifacts destroys the scientific utility of the excavation site. On the other hand, someone doing the work to find coins seems better than nobody doing that work and having them lay in the ground. I wonder if there are more instances of this trade-off between potential good and immediate good.
- lostlogin 6y ago> I wonder if there are more instances of this trade-off between potential good and immediate good. Trading off long term good for immediate satisfaction is pretty common. Getting the discipline to wait for the long term gain is a thing we train kids to do, with varying degrees of success. I’m a sucker for wanting the nice shiny thing right now.
- lodovic 6y ago"Someone doing the work to find coins" - the flip side is "selfish with no moral compass". Historians won't have reliable sources anymore, parts of sites will be missing, this is such a waste. But hey someone made a few bucks.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> “This is a clear message to those who, for the benefit and selfish pleasure of a few, rob us of our common heritage and erase entire swaths of our history.” Speaking of robbing heritage and history, this guy is a complete amateur, compared to the history robbing that the European nations engaged in. Many archeological treasures were stripped from India, Africa, and the Middle East and sent to European museums. Furthermore, those collections are still at the museums and for the most part have not been returned to the countries from which they were taken.
- a4444f 6y agoAlternative news: "Treasure hunters seize 27k artifacts looted by a single French official".