One man describes his adventures with his metal detector
By Jill Campbell Mackay
FOR SOME people, happiness is a warm metal detector and despite strict laws forbidding the practice, dozens of people are currently making a tidy living digging up the past and flogging it to the highest bidder.
To learn more about this lucrative and somewhat suspect hobby, I spoke to Achilleas (not his real name) who for years has been sweeping the island’s fields with his metal detector.
This ‘hobby’ is not, as I first thought, one that appeals only to trainspotting anoraks, but quite the reverse, with aficionados spending much of their time dodging the country’s tough antiquities laws.
Achilleas and others like him have for years campaigned in vain to legitimise their hobby. He wants the government to amend a 1935 law, which “protects any object whether movable or part immovable property” and states that “no person shall excavate or cause excavations to be made whether on his own land or elsewhere for the purpose of discovering antiquities without a formal licence.”
“This law,” he told the Sunday Mail, “is sheer nonsense.”
“We need to look seriously at what is going on with regard to our buried heritage and all the anomalies that surround the act of digging up artefacts.”
“When I first started detecting, I found some interesting coins and duly sent them, as the law requires, to Nicosia where they were to become part of a legitimate collection.
“I didn’t want any reward, I was just delighted that I had found them. That’s the main thrill of the hobby, but I soon changed my tune when I went to the capital to view my finds and was told my treasure trove had been ‘mislaid’.
Achilleas believes there is a black market in operation and that sending anything of value ends up in the hands of a middleman who then sells it to a collector outside the country.
“Now I keep or sell whatever I find. Belt buckles, lead shot, nails and pottery, I will keep or give to friends as nice souvenirs, but I have had some very interesting objects pass through my hands and they all go out of the country.
“Even ten years ago, I was making around £15,000 from the odd item, and if you were to go out every day with the detector, you could easily make a very good living. You have to know something about the island’s history and about the history of coins to make the most of that sort of time investment.”
“One man I know uses an unreported tomb as a sort of bank. He has found all sorts of treasures in there and visits whenever he wants cash.
“He keeps everything secret as many will happily report him to the authorities for a cash reward and he would then certainly go to prison.
“The antiquities department knows where most of the tombs are, but many have been filled in after they have been excavated. There are just so many treasures here that there aren’t enough archaeologists to work all those sites. There also isn’t enough space in our museums to cater for all the pieces that are found.
“We almost have too much stuff, with museums running out of space and being forced to store artefacts outside and uncared for. They don’t know what to do with it all.
“I believe there’s still a good 60 per cent to find beneath our feet.
‘We want a law like the British one’
ACHILLEAS HAS a licence, for which he paid £10 at his local government office. This allows him to own a metal detector, but does not allow him to go out and detect and then take out items from the ground.
The last time that type of licence was issued was about 20 years ago. All buried artefacts belong to the government and you can be fined and even jailed if you are found to own even the smallest undeclared piece of our island’s history.
Achilleas and his friends want a law similar to the British law to be implemented here in Cyprus.
Under the British law of 1996, any find that might be historically significant is to be reported to the coroner’s office. The item is then sent to the British Museum, where experts write a report. The coroner then uses this report to determine if the items are indeed treasure.
If they are, they are then valued and offered to the museum or an auction house to buy. The finder keeps half the proceeds and the land owner the other half.
This law has dramatically changed the relationship between archaeologists and prospectors; previously the latter were uncontrolled and many vandalised ancient sites to plunder antiquities.
British Museum now reports that number of historic objects voluntarily reported to the government has risen by 45 per cent, and metal detectors have dug up over 70 per cent of the 57,566 objects recorded by the scheme since 2003.
Now there is also a strict code of conduct in place, which fosters a responsible approach among amateurs through better education and incentives, and this helps protect the all important source of an object.
As an archaeologist will tell you, an object lives and breathes on context: knowing exactly where it came from, the soil it was dug from and the other artefacts surrounding the field. Without that information, the object loses most of its archaeological value.
Then there’s the huge damage done to artefacts by amateurs, as Achilleas explained: “When you find something which has been buried for thousands of years, you can’t just pick it up and put it in your pocket.
“Coins can become worthless in the hands of the inexperienced and most have already suffered from the damage caused by farmers’ fertilisers.
“Fingerprint oil is the worst offender, as this has a natural corrosive substance. A careless fingerprint on a newly excavated coin can quickly deteriorate and no amount of cleaning can remove it.
“I knew one man who found a very rare coin and put it in a glass of Coca Cola and it was ruined for ever – and just so you know, olive oil is the best cleaner. Also, never run anything under the tap, and never rub at a coin to remove the dirt. A pure gold coin is one that will never corrode,” he added.
In the field
ARMED WITH his metal detector, Achilleas took a friend of mine to a field to show how he worked his machine. My friend was elated as they related the experience to me:
“You use a sort of vacuuming action, so the coiled head of the detector almost scuffs the earth.
Within seconds we hear the two-way signal that indicates a find. It was a small, almost perfectly formed, belt buckle.
It’s really quite an amazing feeling to have your fingers close over something so ancient and evocative, feeling yourself holding hands with history.
I understood his passion and the finding of this ancient belt buckle sent me back to my childhood, giving me a glimpse of that long-forgotten world of infinite possibilities.
Sweeping the surface, we quickly harvested a motley collection: everything from coins, an iron nail, a copper sewing needle, lead shot balls, a Byzantium coin, a copper cross, a lead weight and an arrow head.
Moving on to another less accessible site, we walked over rough ground for about 2km until we reached what at first looked like a boring old field, hardly cultivated and with parts overgrown with weeds and bushes.
Here, we were to visit a mass of recently unearthed tombs and, as we walked around the perimeter, Achilleas pointed out all the digging that had been started by what he calls “nighthawks”, the less than scrupulous prospectors who come in at night and scavenge for artefacts.
They often shore up then cover over their dig, returning later to dig even deeper, searching for the all important sarcophagus. For many, these night raids have proved extremely lucrative.”
‘We want to work with the government’
“DEVELOPERS who come across a tomb would rather empty it secretly and then quickly fill it in than report the find as that would mean a huge delay to their building schedule.
“I know a bulldozer driver who has made a good living out of finding stuff when he does the road works.
“That’s what we want to stop,” said Achilleas. “Not the finding, but to stop the wholesale removal and often damage to artefacts, many of which will never ever be seen again.
“If amateurs could be incentivised to work with archaeologists and help them find stuff, then a great deal more treasures would stay in the country. This would of course mean new museums so people can visit and see for themselves the wealth of history this country carries.”
Achilleas, like many of his fellows, is passionate about Cypriot history. He subscribes to various catalogues, owns a library of books on coins, pottery and jewellery, along with a working knowledge of ancient funeral rites and mythology.
Ask him any question about the Classical and Hellenistic periods and he knows the answer. He has taught himself to recognise and preserve his finds, many of which he would be incarcerated for owning. His house is bereft of any examples of his hobby, as he is forced to hide his finds.
The fact is that Cyprus’ turbulent history has resulted in a country awash with rumours of buried hoards. Sadly a good many of these have been already been uncovered and secretly disposed off.
What Achilleas wants is a licence to detect openly, to be able to have his finds assessed by the authorities to allow both himself and the landowner to benefit from the proceeds of any sale.
Regardless of any change in the law, Achilleas and his friends will continue to vacuum every field, canyon, cave, garden and hillside until they find ‘the big hoard’ they all believe is lying out there waiting to be dug up.
So what find would really make his day?
“That’s easy, I would love to find a gold coin minted during the time of Pnytagoras of Salamis 351-332BC. This is the King who helped Alexander the Great at the siege of Tyre in 322BC. It has a bust of Aphrodite wearing a turreted crown. One coin in good condition would be worth to a collector in the region of €13,000-€17,000.”
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