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November 2018 |
Metal Detecting Hobby Talk News Brief
Volume 9 Number 104 |
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Support The Hobby
I would like to point out to the News Brief readers that there are a number of organizations taking on the challenge against various
types of legislation dealing with metal detecting and gold prospecting. MDHTALK's recommendation is to visit their website and
give strong consideration to joining the fight. In some cases your support may be to send emails and / or write a letter to specific
legislators or to provide funds to help with the fight. Here are the organizations and a link to their website.
Go to the Join The Fight MDHTALK Webpage to read more about each of these organizations
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MDHTALK News Pages
U.S. & W.W. News
U.K. News
U.S. Archaeology
U.S. Legislation
W.W. Meteoritic
Other Media
MDHTALK Article Links
Return Stories
MDHTALK
Find a Club
Read Newsletters
FaceBook Clubs
MDHTALK Event Calendar
November
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What is a News Brief?
The news brief provides a brief look into any news event. The intent of the news brief is to provide you, the reader, with news clips on
what was taking place in the hobby last month. To read the whole story select the Article Link or go to MDHTALK.org.
There are more news stories placed on the MDHTALK website for Octpber the news stories listed in the MDHTALK News Brief are just a portion
of all the hobby related news reported the past month. The news Brief is now available in Adobe PDF format, there is a link at
the top of this webpage. The news brief is no longer emailed; it is only available on the MDHTALK website and can be downloaded.
The Website's featured article for this month is:
Thoughts on Responsible Metal Detecting
Download This Article
The term Responsible Metal Detecting can be found in the Code of Practice on Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales a May
2006 publication. However, the term Responsible Metal Detecting in the U.S. is rarely used or defined. I have used the term in a number
of articles but have never really thought about what this term encompasses. This short article will be an attempt to provide some
definition for Responsible Metal Detecting.
Responsible Metal Detecting is to:
- Know and Follow the Law.
- Gain Permission.
- Apply the Metal Detecting Code of Ethics.
- Join a Metal Detecting Club and National Metal Detecting Association.
- Understand the Potential Cultural Value of Your Find.
- Volunteer Your Services to the Hobby.
Know and Follow the Law means that one should read and understand the American Antiquities Act of 1906 and Archaeological Resources
Protection Act of 1979. Archaeological resources are part of our Nation's heritage and these two acts cover archaeological resources
and their recovery on public and Indian lands.
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General U.S. and World Wide Hobby News
- African Miner Finds 1.1-Kilogram Emerald at Kagem in Zambia.
Article Link
- How a mob of stray cattle started a gold rush in the Pilbara.
Article Link
- Hobbyist with metal detector discovers historic item from 1609.
Article Link
- Treasure Hunter Finds Lock of Hair in Lost Locket in Pippy Park.
Article Link
- Woman pleas for help to find missing ring in South Hadley.
Article Link
- 23-pound armor-piercing round, meant to destroy tanks, found on NC beach after Florence.
Article Link
- Civil War Gold Mystery Thickens.
Article Link
- Treasure Quest exclusive: The team make a massive discovery.
Article Link
- You can search for an estimated $340 million in buried treasure in Texas.
Article Link
- Fargo man finds rare Spanish coin from 1700s near Red River.
Article Link
- They can dig it: Meet the other kind of metal heads, who unearth local history.
Article Link
- Hobbyist reunites owners with missing treasures.
Article Link
- Millville Local Creates Treasure Hunt for Metal-Detector Lovers. Article Link
- Sunrise Reflections, Lost and found objects have a story to tell.
Article Link
- MinRex Resources finds high-grade gold in Marble Bar rock chip sampling.
Article Link
- Treasure hunters doubt FBI’s word on dig for Civil War gold.
Article Link
- Detectorist reveals his greatest treasure: Friendships.
Article Link
U.K. News
- 'Viking treasure' of 252 silver coins found in Denmark.
Article Link
- Metal Detecting Rally raises £27,000 for Bath RUH’s new Cancer Centre.
Article Link
- Late Bronze Age ring found in west Herefordshire.
Article Link
- Girl Finds Pre-Viking Sword While Wading in Swedish Lake.
Article Link
- 3,000-year-old piece of Bronze Age gold found in mbria.
Article Link
- Protestors apologise after taking historical artefacts from Cultural Quarter site.
Article Link
- Hoard of Roman coins unearthed.
Article Link
- Finders isn't keepers in Norfolk.
Article Link
- 11 amazing treasures found using metal detectors in Ireland.
Article Link
- The ghost which stood guard over the Dallinghoo treasure.
Article Link
- Treasure hunter accidentally discovers 200-year-old shipwreck on British channel island.
Article Link
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Other News
- American Mining Rights Assn is not a gold club but rather an advocacy group for miners and public land users to preserve and maintain their rights as they pertain to access to their public lands.
October News
- Gold Prospectors Assn of America (GPAA) - News on legal issues for the gold prospecting community
October News
- Lost Treasure E-Magazine
October Issue
- Prospecting and Mining Journal (IMCJ)
September News
- 1715 Fleet Society
November Newsletter
Jewelry Returns
- Article helps to track owner of class ring.
Article Link
- Woman with metal detector finds lost wedding band in water off beach in Fort Pierce Inlet.
Article Link
- Man finds, returns daughter's high school class ring.
Article Link
North America Archaeology News
- Discovery of Ancient Spearpoints in Texas Has Some Archaeologists Questioning the History of Early Americas.
Article Link
- America’s archaeology data keeps disappearing – even though the law says the government is supposed to preserve it.
Article Link
- Archaeologists find clues at the Yellowstone ice patch.
Article Link
- Business of archaeology helps preserve Ohio history.
Article Link
- Dig fails to unearth 100-year-old boat said to be buried in West Palm backyard.
Article Link
- American People Suffering Historical Amnesia With Many Citizens Knowing “Virtually Nothing” About Their History.
Article Link
W.W. Meteorite News
- The formation of large meteorite craters is unraveled.
Article Link
- 12-pound lunar meteorite sells for more than $600,000.
Article Link
- Meteorite worth $100,000 was used as doorstop for years.
Article Link
- Teen scientists went looking for meteorites in the Great Lakes. They found another type of alien.
Article Link
- Australians find extremely rare mineral in meteorite impact crater.
Article Link
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America’s archaeology data keeps disappearing – even though the law says the government is supposed to preserve it.
PBS News Hour
Article Link
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Archaeology – the name conjures up images of someone carefully sifting the
sands for traces of the past and then meticulously putting those relics in a
museum. But today’s archaeology is not just about retrieving artifacts and
drawing maps by hand. It also uses the tools of today: 3D imaging, LiDAR
scans, GPS mapping and more.
Today, nearly all archaeological fieldwork in the U.S. is executed by
private firms in response to legal mandates for historic preservation, at a
cost of about a billion dollars annually. However, only a minuscule fraction
of the data from these projects is made accessible or preserved for future
research, despite agencies’ clear legal obligations to do so. Severe loss of
these data is not unusual – it’s the norm.
Unanswered questions
Federally mandated projects yield massive amounts of irreplaceable
data, particularly on Native American history. Those data are generated for
the explicit purpose of benefiting the American public.
The primary data include things like counts of different kinds of
artifacts; information on fragments of plant and animals found in fire pits;
maps and photographs of ruined buildings; dates from charred roof beams; and
the chemical composition of paint on pottery. This allows researchers to
understand life in the past – inferring, for example, human population size
and movement, social organization, trade and diet.
The data further enable archaeologists to study social processes that
are important in today’s world, but that operate so slowly that they aren’t
perceptible on time scales available in other social sciences. Why does
migration occur? Why do migrant groups maintain their identities in some
circumstances and adopt new ones in others? What factors have allowed some
societies to persist over very long time periods?
However, this sort of synthetic research depends upon online access
to a wealth of research data and unpublished technical reports. Access to
these data also gives the researchers the ability to replicate the work of
or correct errors by the original investigators.
What’s more, for many, ancestral sites are critical to maintaining
identity and purpose in an increasing global world. Government agencies are
responsible for appropriately managing sites for their scientific, cultural
and educational values. But to do so effectively, they must have access to
full documentation of past investigations. |
Preserving the data
About 30,000 legally mandated archaeological investigations are
conducted each year in the U.S. These projects are usually documented only
in so-called “gray literature” reports that, in most cases, are not readily
accessible, even to professional archaeologists.
The databases that contain the project data are even less frequently
adequately documented, made accessible to other researchers or preserved in
a way that will make them likely to be usable in a few years, much less 20
or 50 years. Data may be stored on media that degrade, like punch cards,
floppy disks or magnetic tape. Hard disks on office computers or servers may
fail, and database software can become obsolete, making the data unreadable.
Data may become a victim to institutional housekeeping if files not used
within a certain period of time are automatically deleted.
As a professional archaeologist and former president of the Society
for American Archaeology, I believe that archaeologists have an ethical
obligation to ensure that the digital records of what is discovered, like
the artifacts, remain available for study in the future.
There are digital repositories expressly designed to make
archaeological information discoverable, accessible and preserved
permanently for future use. At my university, I led the initial development
of the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), which has been publicly
available for eight years. TDAR allows archaeologists to directly upload
databases, documents, photographs, GIS files and other necessary data. The
cost to upload a document or image is typically US$5, while the cost for a
database depends on its size. This includes costs of permanently preserving
the file and making it continuously accessible.
A similar service is available through the University of York’s
Archaeology Data Service in the U.K., which has been around for more than 20
years.
I believe that for all newly authorized projects, agencies must
ensure that the full digital record of their archaeological investigations
is deposited in a recognized digital repository. That information would then
become available not only to researchers and agency personnel, but also to
the public. The cost for doing this is about 1 to 3 percent of the
archaeological project cost, with lower percentages for larger projects.
Agencies also need to begin properly curating the data from projects
that have already been completed. Notably, at TDAR, this process has been
started by a number of U.S. agencies, including the Air Force, the Army
Corps of Engineers and a few offices at the Bureau of Reclamation and the
National Park Service.
Federal agencies are already legally required to preserve the digital
records of publicly funded archaeological investigations. They just aren’t
doing it. To avoid this is to ignore not only their legal obligations and
their obligations to the American public, it is to consign the data – and
all that can be learned from them – to oblivion.
Keith Kintigh is a professor at the School of Human Evolution and
Social Change at Arizona State University. This article was originally
published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.
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Metal Detecting & Gold Prospecting Events.
Now is the time to start planning and getting your club's 2018/19 hunt information on the web. The sooner it is out and available to the metal
detecting community the greater the chance for people to see it and give your event some consideration.
Select here to View the Complete Event Details for November
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- November 03, 2018 (One Day)
Ashland, Virginia
10th annual Old Dominion Relic Dig
Hanover Metal Detectors Club LLC
- November 10, 2018 (One Day)
Round Rock, Texas
Veterans Day Open Hunt
Austin Metal Detecting Club
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- November 10, 2018 (One Day)
Round Rock, Texas
Satellite Hunt
Texas Association of Metal Detecting Clubs
Add Your Event Information Here
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