Note: I have now access to the PAN data, but I am looking for a way to display it here without any troubles. The PAN does not have yet json url ready to be fetched.
The scientific discovery of the past is not usually associated with great numbers of people. Some people would understand it even as an elitist activity. Yet, there are a number of people looking for reliques of the past on their own, either in their free time or as a side effect of their occupations. In this context, there is an ongoing discussion about how to deal with amateur archaeologists specially those using metal detectors. It used to be problematic to gather data about these activities. Consequently the discussions about the role played by amateurs and metal detectorists lacked precise data. However, the British Museum had an innovative idea that offered numbers to the work with amateur archaeologists. Other countries now followed and started their own projects. I want to compare them here. ...
A lot of these finding do not appear in the scientific radar of professional or academic archaeology. However, the internet has made possible to harness some of the potentially lost information. The Portable Antiquities Scheme (a.k.a PAS) is a public programme for the voluntary registration of archaeological finds made by the public in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It uses this capacity to crowdsource information in the network of computers to support and orient hobby archeologists and cautiously safeguard information that would otherwise remain unregistered. In addition to community and educational work, PAS provides a database for research. PAS is, above all, a pedagogical program, making available a database and information on how to deal with archaeological finds. While this is an intelligent strategy, it is certainly not free from discussions. You can read more about this subject in their website (e.g. the Annual Reports) and in the following literature:
- Thomas, S. and Stone, P.G. (eds.) 2009, Metal Detecting and Archaeology. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
- Worrell, S., Egan, G., Naylor, J., Leahy, K. & Lewis, M. 2010, A Decade of Discovery. Proceedings of the Portable Antiquities Scheme Conference 2007. BAR Brit. Ser., 520. Oxford: Archaeopress.
- Gill, D.W.J. 2010, The Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Treasure Act: Protecting the Archaeology of England and Wales? Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 20, 1-11.
- Compagnon, G. (Hrsg.). 2010, Halte au pillage!. Arles: Errance.
- Huth, C. 2013, Vom rechten Umgang mit Sondengänger: Das „Portable Antiquities Scheme“ in England und Wales und seine Folgen, in: Archäologische Informationen 36, p.129-137.
Nowadays the Netherlands started their own program called the Portable Antiquities of the Netherlands (a.k.a PAN). Now, Denmark too with the DIME . And Finland SuALT / Find Sampo
While I am waiting to see what happens with all these projects and much more to come, I thought about building a program that would gather their data, respecting any copyright and sensitive data they do not wish to publish, and display them side by side so that we can get an idea of the comparison between their projects.
I just started with the data from the PAS website. And I am going to start with some data for the Late bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, because that is the data I worked with in my M.A. Thesis. Naturally, I want to make relevant comparisons and, thus, display here how the projects are doing in regard to their own regions, and in regard to the archaeological potentials in their regions. But the idea is to compare with data from the other projects too, once I get all the proportions from each project.
This project just stared, so please be patient. But you will find here, distribution and density maps, and a summary of the data I am retrieving for their websites in real time. I only deal with data open to the public, so as a rule the finds will not be pointing to their exact locations
Also, the maps take a while to load, specially with firefox. So please be patient.
UK LBA & EIA:
Search from 1300BC to 700BC
# Records:
Classified in Bronze Age:
Classified in Iron Age:
Status
Published finds:
Awaiting validation: