There is no versus.

Deep Digger Dan is a popular detectorist. He has 47k odd subscribers and over 200 odd videos. A lot of people listen to what he says. He represent's for the want of a better word a lot of detectorists. On 1st April 2014 Dan had put out a video about detectorists vs archaeologists.

There are over 100 comments on the video. There is also discussion about the video on Detecting Wales and Paul Barford's blog.

From my experience I do not share Dan's point of view.

I don't believe there is any archaeologists vs detectorists war nor should there be. What there should be more of is debate regarding how metal detectorists can best work with archaeologists and vice versa with the realisation that detectorists and archaeologists are not completely separate homogeneous groups.

Where I disagree with Dan is that I think that if an archaeologist is going to spend years studying the best way to conserve history then they deserve the respect that their studies bring. Whilst they might not be right, just because they criticise some detectorist's practices doesn't mean they are all being 'snooty'.

Many detectorists spend half an hour buying a detector and then say they are 'conserving history'. Isn't an archaeologist entitled to wonder and question just how they think they are doing this?

What Dan does not discuss is the fact that, nighthawkers aside, detectorists are not the same. Many detectorists don't report treasure finds, many don't care about the plough line, many don't show their Finds Liaison Officer their finds over 300 years old, those who think an SSSI is some sort of sexually transmitted disease and the many don't give a stuff about anything that isn't silver or gold. It is right to question if these practices make for 'bad' detectorists only marginally below nighthawkers.

An archaeologist or indeed a fellow detectorist should therefore be able to show what metal detecting practices are not exactly 'conserving history' or that 'history hunting' with a metal detector might not actually be in the best interests of society without being accused of starting a war or breaking some weird unwritten tribal metal detecting code.

Just as an archaeologist can ask questions of detectorists practices then so to a detectorist is free to ask questions of an archaeologist and in my experience the responses to such questions have been fair and respectful. No war at all.

Many archaeologists will recognise that many of the recent hoards that have been found have been through metal detecting. Great this is just one point, it does not in my opinion justify the wholesale failure to record 1000's of other items as maybe society has lost more with these unrecorded items?

It is not a simple question of archaeologists vs detectorists as there is no us and them,I think there are just differently weighted perspectives on what constitutes the best way to conserve history. Perhaps the more we as metal detectorists learn the more weight our arguments might hold?