The Tale of Brave Sir Dave

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It seems to me that there is basically something rather cowardly in Dave Welsh's actions posting his attack on the Ancient Artefacts discussion list with 2500 members and moneta-l with another few thousand from which I am excluded from answering. It seems to me that there is something very cowardly in Tim Haines' moderation of what he fondly imagines to be a forum about "responsible collecting", allowing such attacks on a non-member without allowing the victim the right of reply. Moneta-L long ago gave up the pretence of being interested in any open discussion of the issues.

Brave, Brave Sir Dave. Hiding behind his mates and discussion group exclusive moderation. You would not like to say the same to my face here or on my other blog would you? Thought not.

You Tube Clip from Monty Python's "Ye Pretencie of Responsible Coin Collecting for ye Weake of Response".

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Candy, oh Candy what is the TRUTH?

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"Candice Jarman" is still refusing to discuss the issues of where what I write about artefact collecting is misinformation. Instead she continues her vendetta against the author (This is Mr Barford - Part 2 ) with "what do we know about Mr Barford?" - well actually rather less than she thinks, and report as "fact". But then, she is not exactly being honest with her own readers is she?

I am not going to comment on the sketchy reconstruction she offers - I really have nothing to defend, nor be ashamed of, she is rather the person who should be ashamed.

1) "Mr Barford had his own entry on Wikipedia". This page was a spiteful hatchet-job made by a person who also had an anonymous blog on so-called "Barfordisation" surprisingly close in tone and style - and graphic content to Candy's. The abysmal lack of real content padded out by personal attacks and cheap jibes was not worthy even of Wikipedia, and that is why it was removed.

2) "worked as a field archaeologist on a number of excavations, mainly in south Wales" No. I worked on the finds from these, it's why I am a co-author of the reports she cites. Regretfully I have never worked or lived in Wales. "Candy" seems totally unable to work the Google Scholar Search engine, this is why the blog's author simply misses a whole mass of references to article published by me (including some on the themes of collecting). According to my CV, the total should be somewhere around 176 (I've not updated it recently and really have no intention of doing so just because "Candy wants to know", if she wants to do "archaeology for all" let her join an academic library). The alleged review of my book is misquoted, quite tellingly so and should be compared with the seventeen published properly in academic journals and not by some pseudonymous individual on Amazon.

3) "why was the cross taken and for what reason!" [I think the solicitor's secretary intended that to be a question] Simply because it had the name of the person inscribed on it, given the nature of the project, it was important to document the identity of the source of the DNA. After the cross had been photographed, it was replaced back in the same place on what was left of the body in the vault when it was sealed and is still there. By that time the person who wrote the text you were reading had got bored and gone. Cheap shot based on incomplete information.

4) "In June 2009, Mr Barford reportedly cynically compared the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 [...] with his own struggle [...] ". Cheap shot. That is not exactly what I said. http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2009/06/was-tank-man-archaeologist.html

5) "Candy" is another one who does not want to understand the Heritage Action Erosion counter. So be it. It is of course not "Mr Barford[']s Heritage/Artefact Erosion Counter". So that is another cheap shot - but hey, here we are actually getting on to some discussion of the merits of the matter - but it does not last long.

6) "Mr Barford's personal life". Hmmm. "what a remarkable woman Mrs Barford must be" - Yes indeed "Candy", she is, more than you suspect. She has a few choice words about you too, and some professional connections you'd probably feel safer not knowing about. Since she neither sells antiquities nor collects them, nor writes on the topic, I do not see what my wife has to do with my views on portable antiquity collecting. "Candy" even has posted on her blog a picture called "Barford_home.jpg". Instead of showing Mrs Barford's home, it is in fact a technical school, draw your own conclusions. I really do not see how anyone can call the Zoliborz district of Warsaw "dreary".

7) "Candy" writes: "Below is a short biographical entry on Mr Barford picked up on the internet by a correspondent (my emphasis):" Perhaps somebody might like to challenge her on where her correspondent's "source" can be found. I doubt very much that there was ever a text with that precise wording anywhere on the Internet, certainly not one produced in consultation with me. More to the point, as far as I can see there is currently no such text on the internet, not even cached, so the question arises when and where "Candy" claims to have accessed this text. After all, we recall that she claims she only started collecting this material after "she" became annoyed with what I wrote about the Crosby Garrett helmet. I suspect this has come from the same "source" as the fabrications of the spite-ridden Wikipedia page.

For similar stuff (in fact probably the "source" of some of "Candy's" ideas): http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2009/06/paul-barford-voice-of-archaeological.html .

NOW "Candy" has got that off her chest, can we get onto the discussion of artefact hunting and where what I say about it is allegedly wrong? No more beating about the bush, take the bull by the horns, let us see the thrust of your argument. Just one ordinary bloke with another. No need to be shy.

Vignette: British metal detectorists try to put their case the only way they know how.

The zero and the anonymous sniper

Buffy ('What, no Barford Blog?? ') cannot find this blog through the use of the link he himself gives on his "Barford-response" hate-blog. Maybe if he'd paid more attention in school, he'd know the difference between the numeral '0' and the letter 'o', and then he might get it poor chap. Certainly at the moment, this detectorist-ghetto blog is still up and running and reserved for answering the likes of him.

Buffy is trying (Its been a bad week for Barford) to throw a smoke screen over the Wikipedia page that suddenly appeared a few weeks ago. He pretends "It seems that someone hijacked Mr Barfords Wikipipedia (sic)entry and caused the now known to be "less than erudite" one to enter a state of apoplexy before he had to have his own entry removed from the worlds favourite dictionary. (sic) And I missed the whole damn thing. Bugger!". Hardly "highjacking" when a Steve Welton was the entire author of that attack page from beginning to end. A Steve Welton whose writing style shares clear parallels with the idiosyncracies of "Buffy's". Perhaps they are just soul-mates, or maybe there is more in that relationship....

Now Buffy claims "Not all is lost though as I am fortunate enough to have been forwarded a Cached copy of the entry along with the story of events as they unfolded", well, I "wonder" who sent him that, then?

Anyhow, Buffy says: "not only is it amusing, Mr Barfords Wikipedia entry does shed a whole load of new 'personal' light on Mr Barford and his whole 'raison d'etre'". The fact that it was a 'personal' attack presenting untrue information as encyclopaedeic "facts" was the reason why the Wikipedia editors deleted it. There was in fact no "personal" information there, the self-appointed author quite obviously knew nothing about the subject he was writing about beyond what they found in the Internet. By the way Buffy must have had a long "holiday", as Steve Welton began writing that page at the beginning of May and it was deleted in the middle of June.

So one of the things Buffy derives "from the cached Wikipedia page" is that "Barford has no qualifications" (What, no Qualifications?). Well, that's not surprising as that "encyclopedia entry" totally failed to discuss my university background and work, since the author knew nothing of it. Yet Buffy quotes from the Unidroit-L list an old post of mine, the implications which he chooses to ignore. Perhaps he thinks I am lying, but really I do not feel any compulsion to prove myself to a mere "metal detectorist" who canot even put his own true name under what he writes.

Buffy makes a mock confession of having laboured under a misconception about my academic titles [In the circumstances, I find the mocking of Catholics in that post offensive, but cultural sensitivity was never any UK "metal detectorist's" strength]. Nevertheless he'd be hard-put to demonstrate the truth of that with reference to the state of his blog on 7th July, where the only title he uses with reference to me in his blog is "Mr".

'Arry Stottle's got a lotta bottle but Buffy takes the Biscuit

Buffy, apparentrly the alter ego of Steve Welton the Phantom Biographer reckons he can find examples of all thirteen of “Aristotle’s fallacies” in my writing, specifically on my blog. So he’s found a “filosofy fer dummies” webpage, and is successively copy and pasting bits of it onto his blog as though he’d written it and then added some examples of these logical fallacies that he claims he has found on my blog. ("Paul Barford is often found stumbling over his own arguments and conclusions drawn thus, yet he uses the smokescreen of erudition to provide the defensive cover to the paucity of his arguments.") Well, lets have a look at them. So far he’s only got as far as two of these posts, and seems to have run out of stamina.

The first was, appropriately enough, posted the day after April Fools’ Day – this was devoted to ‘Affirming the Consequent’. "Anyone reading this and Mr Barfords Blog will instantly spot that Affirming the Consequent is a favoured tactic of Mr Paul Barfords to foster his pre-agenda (sic) arguments". Examples of this which Buffy claims he has found on my blog are:

" A bad thing was done by someone using a metal Detector. People using metal detectors do bad things"
"An unethically sourced item passed through the PAS.
Items passing through the PAS are unethical".

Now, actually it would be helpful to the reader for Mr Buffy to put a little hyperlink so that the reader can see where I said these things he is using as his “examples” from my blog. Logic would demand that wouldn’t it? But oddly enough this logic does not apply to Mr Buffy’s black propaganda. The reason for this is perfectly logical in fact.

The reason is that nowhere on my blog do I say "A bad thing was done by someone using a metal Detector. People using metal detectors do bad things". What I say may be paraphrased is the opposite, just because some metal detectorists co-operate with archaeology and such things bring benefit to archaeology, not all metal detectorists can be seen as beneficial to archaeology, in assessing the phenomenon we need to differentiate the one from the other and not say that “metal detecting is good for archaeology”. Some of it quite clearly is not.

Equally Buffy is deceiving his readers when he asserts that I said "An unethically sourced item passed through the PAS. Items passing through the PAS are unethical". What I say is that the items recorded by PAS cannot be assumed to all be of licit origin and from the provenance stated, since PAS cannot carry out any independent checks. This means that potentially an unknown quantity of items in the PAS database are of no use as archaeological data and we have no way of knowing which ones. The example illustrates this fact. It is not so much an example of affirming the consequent as raising an issue which calls into question the total (rather than overall) reliability of a dataset.

It took him another three weeks to think up the next post in the series. This is devoted to the "false cause" fallacy. Allegedly “The Assertion of the false Cause if [sic] a favoured tactic of Barfordisation in action. How many times do we see Mr Paul M Barford squirming his way through various topics, presenting his one sided views of a situation, to further his own false cause without giving the reader the true picture.” [I think that is a question but metal detectorists cannot “do punctuation” ]. Well, he has found three examples of what he says is the “Use of False Cause by Paul Barford”:

" Finding and removing metal artifacts destroys the archaeological record"
"YOUR heritage is being destroyed by metal detecting"
" The PAS sanctions the the sale of metal artifacts"

Well, here he’s lost me. I certainly do say that “finding and removing metal artifacts [from the archaeological record] destroys the archaeological record”. Finding and cutting out all the letter ‘b’s from a medieval manuscript Bible would destroy the Bible as it would yesterday’s Times. That is not an example of false cause.

Number two: “YOUR heritage is being destroyed by metal detecting" – Again, this does not seem to be a quote from my blog. Neither is it an example of false cause. Metal detecting and artefact collecting, by removing evidence from the archaeological record without record, is indeed destroying the archaeological heritage, which belongs to everyone, not just a few selfish collectors.

Maybe Buffy has more luck with his third example, also no link sourcing it to a specific point in my blog… " The PAS sanctions the sale of metal artifacts". Where do I say that? [The word sanctions” on my blog is entirely associated with imposition of UN sanctions in Iraq which began the looting there]. I presume that Buffy means the reader to believe that somewhere on my blog it says that artifacts are bought and sold BECAUSE the PAS sanctions such sales. That would indeed be an example of “false cause”, but Buffy if asked would not be able to say where I say such a (stupid) thing. Because I do not.

I find it really puzzling that somebody would set out to prove the existence of logical fallacies in what somebody writes without actually having a single clear example in mind where there actually is such a thing. It’s a bit like somebody setting out to write a biography of a person in an encyclopedia having no idea at all about who that person is or what they have done.

Despite these deficiencies, Buffy soldiers on. Where he can produce no quotes to back up his claim of logical fallacies, he makes them up. He makes up quotes which do not exist, and therefore does not provide hyperlinks to them, safe in the knowledge that the metal detecting populace of Great Britain is not at all interested in checking the facts for themselves. But metal detectorists are a small minority.

All Mr Buffy's insults and innuendos will not change that. Instead of making up quotes in order to say they are nonsense (as they are, they are also fictional), let the pro-collecting lobby take up real arguments, and produce real arguments against them.

I look forward to the third post on the "fallacies" - let us see if Mr Buffy can make an improvement on his first two wholly unimpressive performances in this field.

Metal detectorist Wikiwonkydom

In general I am (unlike most of the academic world) a fan of Wikipedia, its a great idea, but obviously is prone to the whims of the Tom, Dick and Harriets that create it. Any text on Wikipedia related to "metal detecting" tends to be highly tendentious, as they are written by "metal detectorists". It's a waste of time trying to edit them to give a more balanced presentation (which in any case should be under the heading "portable antiquity collecting") and generally personally I have never never thought it worth the effort as they'd only change it back again.

Washington coin collector Peter Tompa found a Wikipedia page called Paul M. Barford and seems to believe that it is an accurate presentation. He is apparently not a very critical reader. Just as its author (one Steve Welton) is not a particularly fastidious author. He'll obviously write any old crap to try and discredit those he sees as his enemies. Personally I was not even aware until yesterday that there ever was a "Steve Welton" in the world. But I do now. He does not however restrict his attacks to me, he brings in another group of people concerned with the protection of the heritage, Heritage Action. I see that in the discussion page attached to the Wikipage concerned, its Chairman is objecting in no uncertain terms to the imposition. He writes:

In general terms, I know Paul Barford well, which the author doesn’t, and I confirm the article contains many distortions and lies which lead me to believe it is of malicious intent.
In specific terms I wish to cite the section titled “The Heritage Counter”. As Chairman of Heritage Action I should like to
point out 1.) that its title is not as suggested but is “The Heritage Action Artefact Erosion Counter” 2.) that it is not designed to highlight “various odd bits of metal unearthed by metal detectorists” but, in the words on our website “recordable artefacts” 3.) The quote from our website "The counter may or may not be a precise reflection" was cut short mid-sentence, deliberately to mislead in my view. It goes on “of the rate of depletion. The broad picture it paints, of millions of artefacts being progressively removed and society being deprived
of the associated knowledge of its past, is certainly accurate.” 4.) Paul Barford was NOT it’s creator – I was. It was my idea, my design, my accompanying text and Heritage Action’s algorithms. Paul was consulted, as were many others, and supports it, as do many others. In my view, since the true facts are freely available, the false facts were not mistaken but deliberate and intended
to both mislead regarding the nature of metal detecting and to blaggard one of it’s critics. As such, it should not be allowed to stand here. It reduces Wikipedia to a farce.
Should the author or any like-minded British metal detectorist wish to create a page about Heritage Action or me, Nigel Swift, they are free to do so. However, it would seem to me that in view of the global reach of Wikipedia its effect will not be as they anticipated. In the rest of the world people who are in favour of archaeological conservation are well thought of whereas metal detectorists, who help themselves, are despised. The prospect of the latter attempting to discredit the former will be seen for precisely what it is.
Heritage Action (talk)
11:36, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Mr Welton may think that by launching this ill-researched, ill conceived and thoroughly objectionable personal attack, he is strengthening the position of metal detecting in the United Kingdom. Instead he is simply compromising it, showing the milieu for what it is. If Mr Welton or Mr Buffy wish to "respond" to the issues raised by those who suggest we need to take a closer look at the long term archaeological effects of artefact hunting and collecting on the archaological resource, then I suggest that if they do not want to get laughed right out of court for their ridiculous aggressive posing and strutting, then they should responsd with proper responses, not attacks. the same goes for Mr Tompa and his coin collecting mates over the other side of the sea.

Buffy and the Heritage Action Counter

Steve Welton a "metal detectorist" seems not to understand some basic issues.
Nevertheless he persists in writing about things of which he has no inkling.

Paul Barford was instrumental in the creation of the Heritage Action counter, a web based instrument designed to loosely highlight the possible number of various odd bits of metal unearthed by metal detectorists in order to demonstrate how tedious and time consuming *metal detecting can be.

The purpose of course is entirely different as even an utter ignoramus like Buffy should recognise.

The rest of this section of the "encyclopedia article" is irrelevant. Some basic writing and editorial skills are lacking here. I am nothing to do with Heritage Action, Heritage Journal, nor David Lammy. I support the first two, but am not responsible for what they do or say, so maybe Buffy should start separate articles on them.

I wonder though what possible relevance Steve Welton thinks such a text would have to anyone looking at the encyclopedia outside British metal detecting? Let us note the average length of biographies of British archaeologists more deserving of a place in an encyclopedia is about three quarters of a page of succinct factual material, Buffy just waffles, and gets it wrong.

The Pitfalls of writing an Encyclopedia Article if you are an Ignorant Malicious Intellectual Gnome

Somebody calling themselves Steve Welton has written a wikipedia article about "Paul M. Barford". A sample:

Paul M Barford is a British born former archaeologist (*Polish- Archaeolog) who in 1986 moved to Poland and is currently living in central Warsaw. Formerly an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, *University of Warsaw (*Polish - Uniwersytet Warszawski) and an Inspector of Ancient Monuments in the *Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland (*Polish- Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego). During his time as inspector Barford, it is believed that Paul Barford personaly inspected many of Polands Ancient Monuments.Paul Barford also wrote articles on conservation during his time inspecting *[1] Paul Barford is the author of various books, articles, Blogs,Internet forum threads and several reports on excavations in England and Poland. Paul Barford now works as a translator. Paul M Barford is interested in *Slavic Peoples ,in particular *Early Slavs and the development of Slavic tribes as they spread across central Europe and has since written a book on the subject. Education & Qualifications Currently unknown.

Good grief. As many as eight factual mistakes and three spelling mistakes in one paragraph. What kind of an "encyclopedia" is that? So if the author actually currently does not know anything about the subject's educational background, why did he put pen to paper before finishing his research? What "qualifications" does the author of the article have for writing on this subject, it is not his knowledge of Polish or what the subject has done for a start. In fact where are the date of birth and death of the subject? What was the subject doing between 1974 and 1986? Was the subject always engaged in research into the early Slavs since 1986, or was there some other field of research involved? Where's the sex scandal?

It is clear from the topics which the writer "selects" for discussion, that he is a "metal detectorist".

This in Wikipedia terminology is an "attack page" and for this reason, I doubt it will be up for long. The author seems not to take into account that not everybody reading an encyclopedia thinks that metal detecting is acceptable. His writing lacks focus.
Besides which he is deliberately and slyly misleading.

"Current interests/ Since the early 1990s Paul M Barfords main interests have been searching eBay and also artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities and coins. Paul Barford is also an avid blogger and internet forum user."

and

Coin Collecting/ Paul Barford has a particular interest in coin collecting & *Numismatics and is a regular contributor to internet discussions regarding coins and coin collecting, especially coins offered for sale, where his insight and knowledge has proved invaluable in proving the sometimes disputed *provenance of rare coins.

This no doubt is slanderous in the circumstances, besides which the author displays ignorance, there was no eBay in "the early 1990s".

Interestingly, I found an eBay seller called "Swelton" - and there is no trace of a metal detectorist Steve Welton on the PAS database. I doubt it is his real name. Like the sly individuals who wrote to the Times falsely using my name...

It is obvious that metal detectorists are worried about some of the arguments that are being raised against the glib justifications that are offered in favour of the hobby of the expoloitation of archaeological sites merely as a source of collectables. Instead however of addressing these arguments, a whole bunch of them is merly engaged in diversive tactics of deception like this "black propaganda".