Why is it illegal to use Metal Detectors in Ireland

too much chance of coming across more catholic church septic tanks.

Nothing to do with how deep it is buried. The State owns things to do with national heritage, not you or any other individual regardless of what else you own. You may be entitled to receive a reward for finding it however

Does that not cover lands/buildings already discovered, no?

Didn't they make some major find down in Waterford a few years ago?

In the UK all treasure belongs to the monarch. That rule obviously didn't survive Ireland becoming a Republic. But the Supreme Court found that the State had a right to all items of national heritage.

Edit: I have just seen that Bubblypop posted the link to the actual case above.

Because randomers digging up artefacts tells you **** all about their context ie the important stuff. Sure you’ll have a few trinkets, but you’ll have a balls of a time trying to figure out what that “story” of the object is. Archaeological dig sites are essentially like crime scenes.

I have a friend who was working in the “industry” around then. He said that the archaeologists were terrified of holding up construction for too long.

A lot of “finds” we’re ignored, obviously they couldn’t ignore any big ones but the company wouldn’t get hired for any future digs if they were anyway thorough.

A fair few archaeologists were unemployed around then too so you can see why they were beholden to the business “interests” of the construction groups.

The object itself isn't the main interest. It's the context of where it's found. Say you find a thousand year old silver cross in the ground. How do you know it's been in the ground a thousand years, or some lad didn't bury it there last week or last year, or 300 years ago?

The problem with metal detectorists is they destroy the context of an object.

If something has survived in the ground a thousand or five thousand years, it's unlikely to be destroyed any time in the next few hundred. Plenty of time to get proper archaeologists to dig it up.

i was just about to comment that.

it’s illegal to go out and try find artefacts coins etc, but you can use a metal detector for other purposes like finding items you’ve lost wedding rings etc

The second you pull something out of the ground, you have erased almost everything there is to be learned from it. Its like wiping it down for fingerprints.

If every yahoo in the country had a metal detector, we wouldn't have a ringfort or a cairn left.

But you have also excluded the possibility of a proper archaeological investigation of the artefact in situ. And in a lot of cases this would be stuff that wasn't under imminent threat from development anyway.

The answer to the problem of insufficient resources for archaeological investigation of development sites is not to create a second mechanism by which archaeological heritage may be degraded or destroyed.

Lol. Boom time and archeologist in the one sentence as if they get paid "boom time" wages.

In the past even archaeologists - many of whom were really not much more than the equivalent of metal detectorists but without the technology - would dig around looking for 'treasure' in the name of historical investigation. What they wanted was the dramatic stuff, the gold and coins and swords and so on. In the process they destroyed both the environment of the find, the layers of earth showing the history of the site, and such things as wrappings were discarded. Fabric tells a much more interesting and detailed story about history than pieces of gold, but it was dumped and ignored. Now it is all given much more attention, but it waits until the state can afford to do it properly. If time passes, then fine, better ways of examining and analysing things are being developed all the time.

Obviously things are going to be turned up accidentally now and again, but that is a lot different to every randomer who wants to treasure hunt going around with a metal detector. The treasure is not the pieces of gold, it is the entire story that surrounds it. There may be an odd coin or bit of jewellery lying under the surface of fields that might be turned up with no history attached, but it is impossible to legislate for deliberately searching for them without opening the floodgates to people greedily tearing places apart.

Hang on, you complained that they were building roads without any consideration for archeology in one post, and then when it was pointed out to you that this isn't the case, suddenly you have a problem with the fact that they do involve archeologists? Your use of the word "treasure" in that post is interesting too. Implies glory hunting instead of actual interest in archeology, anthropology and history.

I assume from your posts there's a personal agenda at play. Good luck with it.