Pembrokeshire treasure hunter unearths Celtic chariot

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-46294000

by yitchelle • 8 years ago

80 38 8 years ago

markvdb• 8 years ago

"He emailed a picture to an expert contact who said it was part of a Celtic horse harness and dating from around 600 BC.

Professionals should have taken over here.

Mr Smith, from Milford Haven, went straight back the following day. He dug down to"[...]

The context layers in a dig betray is often very important. Even if he didn't destroy valuable objects, he most probably destroyed a lot of valuable information!

isostatic2• 8 years ago

Sure

But when faced with

"But he had to convince the experts. One of the first he spoke to told him: "No, you're wrong. One's never been found in this part of the country.""

what can you do?

zhte415• 8 years ago

He certainly didn't give up. He seems tenacious. And that seems the right thing to have been done.

"I knew the importance of them straight away," said Mr Smith who has been prospecting for around 30 years.
"It was just instinct. I'd read all about chariot burials and just wished it could have been me, so finding this has been a privilege."

The area has a long Celtic history. For readers unfamiliar perhaps with the UK or this part of the UK, some context: the stones in Stonehenge [0] were sourced from the Preseli Hills [1] several hundred kilometers away (in the part of Wales this site is).

Pembrokeshire is beautiful, and somewhat rugged. Rolling hills meet sandy beaches, equally meeting treacherous cliffs. As a child, I remember frequently climbing to the peak of an iron age settlement in the morning, sort-of mixing-in with the sheep left to roam there, then after lunch, a quite long walk down to the sandy beaches it overlooked. Trying to catch shrimp in the sandy pools the escaping tide left.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preseli_Hills

sandworm1014• 8 years ago

But this guy was a hunter. There is a legal tension whenever a hunter finds the tip of what looks to be a big find. Should they hand it to experts, and let the experts make the further discoveries, or thouroughly document the site so they can claim the credit for each object found?

There are normally negotiations, and silly theatrics whereby the original detectorist stands amongst the scientists, so they are seen to be "discovering" each piece as it is unearthed. I dont fault them. Millions might be at stake.

SmellyGeekBoy2• 8 years ago

I can't fault the detectorists for wanting to be involved, it would be a real shame to discover something like this and then just hand it straight off to someone else the second things started to get interesting. A lot of these people are very passionate about history, any potential financial incentive might just be a secondary consideration.

SmellyGeekBoy2• 8 years ago

The article says he's been finding these items for 30+ years. He may not be a "professional" archaeologist but I'm sure he's more than familiar with the process and the protocol around these things as well as the importance of not destroying valuable evidence. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, at least.

codeulike• 8 years ago

He didn't dig very far - only as far as he needed to show what it was - and left most of it for the archaeologists to dig, if you read the article

vectorEQ• 8 years ago

very cool find. archeologists also destroy a lot of evidence, and if they find anything that doesn't fit rpevious findings often either ignore it or are highly skeptical, which is why i assume he hd some trouble to convince this was an actual find, and had to ... dig a little deeper :D

pulisse2• 8 years ago

if they find anything that doesn't fit rpevious findings often either ignore it or are highly skeptical\

If they find something that doesn't fit previous findings, they publish on it and get tenure.

agsdfgsd• 8 years ago

That may happen sometimes, but there's also examples of findings that contradict popular hypotheses and the person who found it gets their career destroyed and labelled as a "crank" and a "fraud" rather than getting tenure.

chrisseaton2• 8 years ago

Tenure is not a thing in the UK.

philipodonnell• 8 years ago

You have a very optimistic outlook on the response of the academic community to findings which refute long-help beliefs.

doitLP• 8 years ago

It seems like the UK government’s Treasure Act really incentivizes the right kind behavior in these situations. He found it, contacted the right people and once it gets evaluated he and the landowner are going to get a big payday. Better than making off with valuable artifacts and destroying the site.

The Treasure Act allows for a reward up to the market value of the treasure to be shared among the finder and the tenants and/or owner of the land on which the treasure was found. The amount of the reward and how it is divided among the claimants is determined by the Treasure Valuation Committee.

Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996

yitchelle• 8 years ago

How is the market value determined, especially for items that have never been sold on the market before?

hycaria• 8 years ago

Rarity, significance, state of conservation... I'm not surprised a market value can be assessed by people working in the field.

fredley• 8 years ago

Typically at some kind of auction.

gsnedders• 8 years ago

The Treasure Act 1996 only has territorial extent over E+W+NI, notably excluding Scotland, where treasure is still dealt with under (Scots) Common Law.

Notably, any reward is granted purely to the finder, though there is no default right to search land one does not own (and if discovered without permission of the landowner, there have been cases where the entire reward has been awarded to the landowner); de-facto, following the English and Northern Irish law, landowners normally grant access such that any reward is split equally.

sandworm1014• 8 years ago

> market value of the treasure

Key words. If is isn't "treasure" it isn't subject to the act. Material belonging to British military units isn't treasure and remains property of the crown forever (basically all ship-related stuff). Anything else that once belonged to the crown still does. So if some lord buried a stash of silver and never dug it up, you may need to dig into family histories to determine if that lord's property had ever reverted to the crown. Treasure hunting isn't ever simple and you never really know if you can keep the stuff until long after the initial discovery.

Note too that the act speaks of "two or more" coins. One coin is treated differently than a find of two. This goes back to an older distinction between buried treasure and lost property. A single coin may fall out of a pocket and be lost. Two coins together are presumed deliberately buried or otherwise hidden.

steve19• 8 years ago

Has there ever been a case where treasure belonging to a lord whose assets were seized 500+ years ago was deemed property of the crown?

flukus• 8 years ago

How do they determine market value without a market?

gred• 8 years ago

Indeed. These sorts of finds rarely make the news in countries where metal detecting is explicitly and/or effectively against the law -- not because they're not occurring, but because they happen outside of the law and the artifacts are sold on the black market.

apo• 8 years ago

For a comedic peek into the culture around Britain's detectorists (ties in nicely with this story), check out the series Detecorists, available on Netflix:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists

Pembrokeshire treasure hunter unearths Celtic chariot

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