Candy Just Does not Get It, Does He?

.
It seems that the person posing as "Candice Jarman" is not terribly clued up on who he is attempting to gather information on for his next attack. In reply to my last post about his attempts to get Yahoo discussion list members to provide information in order to attack blog-owner Damien Huffer, he writes:

to reiterate: it is perfectly legal to metal detect with permission on private land in the UK, it is perfectly legal to collect provenanced and unprovenanced antiquities that legally left their countries of origin before 1970. Period! It is illegal to metal detect on private land without permission and on scheduled ancient monuments and to loot archaeological sites. For those that do there are legal penalties. Period!

Golly, and Damien Huffer's blog is about metal detecting in the UK is it? Is that why He (Candy) is apparently intending to go after him now? Shurely Shome Confushion here?

Well, we all know what is "perfectly legal" ("no US law was broken" eh?), what the questions which collectors should be addressing concern are the limits of ethical collecting in the international antiquities market. "It's legal innit?" is the stock in trade of the detectorist and bent dealer alike. Oddly enough, as anybody except Mr Candice can see, in my main blog UK "metal detecting" are seen in the wider context of artefact hunting and collecting as a whole. I really do not see any reason why the phenomenon cannot be examined in that wider context.

Mr Candice has a pretty inventive imagination, he does not believe there is any such thing as a no-questions asked market in antiquities, reckoning that collectors of, for example, Bronze Age dugups always ask questions concerning legal title and provenance. Obviously this Candice does not buy antiquities through the big well-respected London auction houses where the answers to such questions are simply not proffered, not to mention other dealers - Timelines for example. Candy obviously has never come across US coin collectors who - to judge by the way these items are routinely ("traditionally") offered for sale without any such information - could not care a hoot where stuff comes from, including buying apparently unreported finds from UK metal detectorists and collectors. Oh, it's legal all right - so Candy sees no problem no doubt.

However, the fact that British artefact hunters and collectors do not perceive the existence of a problem does not mean it does not exist, merely reflects their refusal to see the wider context of what they do. Candice Jarman's blog illustrates the degree to which they resent it when others point this out. Instead of however arguing the case in a reasoned manner we see the same tendency for personal attacks as is exhibited in other parts of the no-questions-asked antiquity collecting world.

.
Vignette: Bronze Age antiquities.