14 DAY TRIAL // Farmers in certain areas of the UK are now in a very awkward position, as they have to battle looters on their own lands. Furthermore, the crooks, armed with metal detectors, are wreaking havoc amidst Britain's invaluable architectural sites, looking for treasures to sell to private collectors, who pay large sums of money for prehistoric artifacts. On the other hand, historians are incredibly frustrated that authorities seem to be doing too little to stop the ransacking from taking proportion.
“It doesn't make for a quiet life. We have now caught 50 people. In the early days, everyone was prosecuted. Now those not 'known to the police' are let off with a caution. The penalties, if anything, are diminishing, from a low base,” John Browning, a Suffolk farmer who is patrolling his field every day looking for illegal drill holes, says. His property lies on a ground very rich in Saxon and Roman artifacts, and is located over what hundreds of years ago was a crossroads in the area.
“If a man – or woman – were caught with a pickax handle trying to break off a stone from St Paul's Cathedral, I expect the penalties would be severe. But people are regularly destroying our heritage and get a fine less than a parking ticket,” the farmer adds. He also says that the public perception on these phenomena is very relaxed, and that most people don't know that some of the gangs involved in stripping the UK of its history are very well organized and sometimes even turn violent when caught red-handed.
“We want people to see the magnitude of what's going on. Once these things are removed, their provenance disappears and that makes the object almost valueless from a cultural point of view. This is a finite resource – once it's gone, it's gone,” English Heritage representative Greg Luton points out.
“Once a site is scheduled, it goes on the Internet. You might as well put the GPS co-ordinates on with a sign saying 'dig here.' The archaeologists rarely have the resources to properly dig a recently discovered site. When they run out of money, the rest is effectively left to the looters,” Cliff Smith, who legally operates a metal detector and always alerts authorities if precious finds are made, explains.