Nighthawkers raid nation's archaeological heritage to sell on eBay

Britain's archaeological heritage is being plundered by metal detector users who are illegally raiding protected sites across the country, it has been claimed.

Heritage executives want the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to crack down on "nighthawkers", who use the latest equipment to find antiquities, which they then sell on websites such as eBay.

English Heritage said that 88 of its protected ancient sites, a third, had been raided, with looters concentrating their activities at high-profile Roman settlements. Looters had also raided a further 152 agricultural plots of land, causing damage to crops or fields as well as to archaeological digs authorised by the Culture Secretary.

Police said that some thieves had formed loose networks to trade information, often in online forums, about new and vulnerable sites.
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Nighthawking is defined as the search and removal of antiquities from the ground using metal detectors without the permission of landowners or where the practice is banned. The maximum penalty is three months in prison and a £1,000 fine but most cases do not even reach court.

Speaking before today's conference at the British Museum on the problem, Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, acting chairman of English Heritage, said that the practice was destroying the country's heritage.

"Nighthawkers, by hoarding the finds or selling them on without recording or provenance, are thieves of valuable archaeological knowledge that belongs to us all," he said.

"Even in the case where the finds are retrieved, the context of how and where exactly the finds were found has been lost, significantly diminishing their historical values."

Most of the illicit digging takes place between 10pm and 3am on areas of soft soil in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire.

Chief Inspector Mark Harrison, of Kent Police, said: "The offenders are in two categories - they are people who like to build up a private collection, who keep a secret museum of heritage artefacts in their home, or they are in it for financial gain."

He said that many scoured newspapers and council minutes for planning applications for new roads or other developments. "Once the bulldozers and excavators have broken through the top soil, they have access to 4,000 years of history," he said. "They are not armed with guns or weapons but they are robbing that knowledge from the nation when they steal and hide away ancient coins, axes or other artefacts."

There had been cases, he said, of farmers being threatened after confronting groups of men trespassing on their land at night.

English Heritage said that the 240 raids reported by police between 1995 and 2008 probably represented only a fraction of the amount of nighthawking going on in Britain. According to a survey it carried out, only one in seven landowners targeted by nighthawkers informed the authorities.

Researchers also found that about one in every 20 archaeological excavation sites was targeted by thieves.

The traffic of antiquity sales on the web is monitored, but experts say that it is impossible to know if items on sale are legitimate or if they have been stolen from a protected site or other land.

Heritage bodies believe that this trade could be halted if new powers under the Treasure Act made it an obligation for anyone in contact with a treasure to report it to the authorities, and for finders and sellers to prove that they have legal ownership of the items. They also want eBay to introduce more stringent checks on antiquity sales in the UK, a practice already in force in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Case study: The farmer

John Browning, 64, regularly patrols his 250-acre farm armed with night sights and thermal imaging equipment. His land at Icklingham, Suffolk, is a magnet for heritage thieves because it is home to a Roman settlement and a designated ancient monument site.

He said that trespassers arrived every fortnight to dig holes on his land and use metal detectors. A few had been caught and prosecuted but he thought the penalties were paltry and that magistrates and judges had no real understanding of the magnitude of the crime.

"When a defendant says he has only taken a few corroded coins that have no value, the courts don't understand that these people are damaging history. It's not coin theft, it's not treasure theft, it's heritage theft."

He said that stiff fines should be given to anyone caught plundering ordinary land and a double penalty for raids at protected sites. Until then all landowners should report every nighthawking incident to the police and lobby for a crime number so that police data can show the scale of the crime across the country. source>>>

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