Procedure, Security and Maintenance. We have to raise certain questions when any digging occurs ( of a sensitive nature ) and is posted here on the forum. We want to make sure that the end result of the thread ends positive. Nothing more than that..and is not meant as a personal attack.by blaksaussa
The thread will be monitored so no back lash comes against the WRF.
Regards Larry
It is not the size of a Collection in History that matters......Its the size of your Passion for it!!- Larry C
One never knows what tree roots push to the surface of what laid buried before the tree was planted - Larry C
“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” - Winston Churchill
Thank you Larryi get it and i understand your point but the approach was way to agressive from this moderator....we are all here to work together, and this found is a great found for Normandy history as this soldier will have 70 years later his place among his comrades.
so understand that i don't want to be called grave-robber when i'm certainly not ...
a lot of people are digging in Normandy and this is what it is all about, as the name of this forum : war relics...
this time we found a soldier and it is a valuable found especially if we can identify him for the family..
Matt i don't know if it will help you but for example this is Otto Funk dog tag, he is a well known soldier from 12th SS PZ Div HJ, Rgt 25 / 15e AufklarungsKompanie
best regards
We all hope that next time that is what happens, rather than starting with insinuations before a single question has been asked.
I'd not seen that disc before- it actually belonged to Otto Funk? Interesting. Well it seems although SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-Bataillon 9 was only created in 5.1943 from SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-Bataillon 'Der Führer', they were the replacement formation for the new 9. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division, so that must be why they enrolled so many men. That's something new to me- I hadn't known that a single Ersatz-Bataillon could have supplied a whole Division. In this case though- does anyone know if Funk began in the Hohenstaufen and transferred to the Division HJ? Or when he enlisted?
Ohhhhh- pillage then burn...
My absolute concern is for the respectful, dignified and legitimate recovery of human remains from battlefield graves and not war relic trophy hunting and if this stance is mistaken for an "aggressive approach" be that as it may, I am wholly unapologetic.
In your original post you merely showed a ground dug dog-tag and a photo of a hole in the ground and described the finds of a fallen soldier, his comb with hair, skull and bones along with a dog tag. It was not until several posts later, after my "Gestapo" like interview questioning that you were forthcoming with the information that you were part of some well-known (but unnamed) organisation working under the auspices of the local (French?) authorities. Were any photos taken showing the "authorities" being involved in the handing over of the human remains?
MattL asked why the question (from me presumably) of your intentions was not asked first, so belatedly let me ask, what are your intentions regarding the non-human remains especially ones such as the comb with human hair in it that you found in the war grave? Does your organistation sell them, divide the spoils or try to reunite the dog tag for example with the family once the Volksbund have identified the fallen soldier? What is the generally accepted rule for such finds, is it "finders-keepers" ?
Because of the wider audience that WRF enjoys it would IMO be useful to restate that the WRF rules for posting war dug threads are these:
Laws and Battlefield Archaeology !!
"We also need to differentiate between those who are metal detecting etc with permission and those who are carrying out fully authorised Archaeology including the recovery of the remains of Human Beings from Battlefield sites.
In future it may be that if any member wants to post in this section they must be able to prove either in open forum if they wish or by pm or e mail that they have the relevant authority to carry out these activities lawfully, this has been the policy for some time already but from here on in it will become a rule which if ignored will lead to threads being deleted etc."
If not having previously done so, maybe you can PM someone in the Moderating/Admin team the details of this information or post it here?
I collect, therefore I am.
Nothing in science can explain how consciousness arose from matter.
A question to the thread starter, what happens to the artefacts recovered from the metal detector searches? Did all the objects recovered from the dig remain with the skeletal remains and get handed over to the local authorities? On digs without human remains do the artifacts get reported to the local authorities and handed over to them if required?
You state that you have the landowners permission, but in certain areas in France, such as all the major known battle sites/areas metal detecting is illegal even with the land owners permission, so was your site away from a known battlefield site/area?
The problem I have is that the short term gains made from amateur metal detecting in such areas where battles took place in the past will remove the proper contextual information that is derived from a properly conducted archaeological investigation. It is standard practice these days to not excavate sites in many cases unless there is a known and tangible threat to the sites as the pace of advances in archaeological techniques will almost certainly mean that any excavation is likely to miss information that a more advanced excavation would uncover.
It is certain that in most cases the digging of artefacts by metal detectors will miss important information and the practice should be discouraged. I have thought long and hard on this subject and unlicensed and unmonitored metal detecting will in the long run decrease the information available to future researchers and those who engage in unscrupulous detecting with lttle regard for items other than those they can keep for their collections or sell will be discarded which all too often is the human remains.
In this case it seems that the thread starter reported the human remains, but I would like to hear more detail about how they were excavated and what techniques were used during their excavation.
Regards,
Jerry
Whateverits just an opinion.
Anon:
Just a question and I'm not trying to start an argument here, I'm really wondering... are any of these authorized search groups, probably comprised mostly by "amateur" volunteers, ever under the obligation of doing what you inquired about in the quote below?
If so, in most cases, what happens to these items? It's my understanding, from talking to people that dig on behalf of these organizations, that a lot of them don't even want most of the equipment found along with remains, such as helmets etc., and that if they are included/handed over it's mostly discarded as rubbish ---On digs without human remains do the artifacts get reported to the local authorities and handed over to them if required?
Last edited by slados28; 10-06-2014 at 05:33 PM. Reason: directed at wrong poster
Which is one of the reasons why the practice should be banned or at the very least be only undertaken by licensed operators/practitioners under strictly monitored conditions. At some time in the future this aspect of the archaeological record will need to be studied and those future researchers are, as it stands, just going to find lots of robbed out sites with empty holes and piles of rotting leather items and rusty ferrous objects discarded somewhere nearby. Also piles of dislocated and disarticulated human skeletal remains.
PS, it as I who you quoted I think
Regards,
Jerry
Whatever
Sorry, I will correct that.
I was referring to the perceived lack of interest in these items from the official side, something that in return, if these officially approved/licensed excavations are to be continued, would in my mind mean that it's a good thing that the diggers themselves preserve them along with the history behind them... when the other alternative is that they are discarded.
And this is also why I asked if you actually knew of any organizations such as this working under obligations to return all artifacts to the officially responsible party... and, if so, if you could provide some clarity as to what happens to the said artifacts.
Of course, if this was to be banned altogether there's no point in discussing this at all... but it is LEGAL and happening under official supervision/with offical approval and, in my mind, it's a fair system that works out to the benefit of the families of those found. Again, disregarding "illegal" digging here --- which is another discussion entirely in light of the subject of my query.
I am not sure that it is legal, in France most of the major battlefield sites are illegal to detect, the same in the Nederlands and the UK and no metal detecting at all is allowed in Ireland and in Germany major battlefield sites are illegal to detect on.
The quest for artefacts to satisfy collectors or the collector market is not a good enough justification to disturb these sites and especially if human remains are there and sooner or later all such activity will be banned. Those muppets who were involved in the ill thought and thankfully cancelled tv detector show has raised awareness of such activity amongst the professional archaeological community and things will change. If the detectorist community wants to continue in its activities it needs to raise its standards on a par with professional archaeological standards before such changes or a complete ban are forced upon it
If you want to continue detecting, raise your standards and ask yourself why you want to go around digging up our shared past, from an honest desire to help families recover their lost relatives (a mostly haphazard and chance happening which as such cannot be really justified without specific targeted research agenda's with fully formed strategies) or to recover artefacts for your own or other peoples collections.
Regards,
Jerry
Whatever
The facts concerning discarded items from ww2, as I see it, is that there's no real interest in general and that most of it is considered rusted out junk/nazi junk -- I see no large scale interest in digging up artifacts from these wars from the official side as there's so much war loot intact in museums already. As time goes by, items deteriorate and given the immense scale of this conflict there's no reason to believe anything else than that if not for "amateur" detectorists a lot of the items would have been lost to time and never recovered. As a conscientious collector I always do my best to record any and all info I can find on the items that I collect and as such I have no qualms about it. Of course, bad people also populate this hobby as they do any other popular pastime or profession/part of society and it goes without saying that discarding human remains for simple item recovery is an appalling act but the fact that some do terrible things like that should not automatically reflect upon the rest abiding with sound general moral guidelines...
The strange thing is that most people do not seem to even care about "our collective past" revolving around ww2 and neither does the official side. I see this all the time here in Norway, the government tears down buildings of historical ww2 significance while us supposedly "amoral" and "selfish" collectors protest to no avail. Most items acquired from families have often been with them since the war and as such they too represent a link to the past that would have been lost if it was not for collectors searching out and preserving them for the future. The lack of general interest in our collective past is surely visible by looking at how much is simply discarded by private households.
My main point is that with the current perceived lack of care from the official side/people in general (with regards to strictly material finds) coupled with the absolute benefits of licensed VOLUNTEERS searching the fields and deep forests of Europe for those left behind I cannot fault anyone for digging and possibly, in return, keeping a few artifacts if they would have been discarded anyway or are not of particular significance. You could always argue that every single item found represents a tiny bit of the whole picture but thinking that handing everything over to the official side would result in them keeping and preserving or even caring about every rusted out helmet shell or canteen is, to put it lightly, borderline naive...
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