Most of us went to school and managed to avoid dropping off in history lessons, so I guess most of us who went to school in England learnt about Henry VIII. It seems however that the attention span of metal detectorists did not extend too far into such lessons, so they have to have it explained by metal detectorist John Winter why after the mid 1540s and after his death, the king had the nickname "old coppernose" and what that big word "debased [in italics]" means. Duh. My childhood "Seaby's Coins of Great Britain and Ireland" has that information in it. I really find it odd that this information should be being cross-posted across the metal detecting forums as some kind of new information for tekkies (or an attention-seeking drive to get more readers): "Henry VIII – Old Coppernose" - John Winter blog
Henry VIII – Old Coppernose - Minelabowners.com
Old Coppernose - Australian Metal Detecting and ...Old Coppernose - DetectingScotland.com
The significance of this is that the PAS official pro-collecting propaganda in England and Wales states that these folk are doing it (hoiking and collecting) because of a pre-existing "love of history" and a desire to "learn about history", and to create (with their partners) information about history. How, however, can we speak of any kind of partnership when the one side is lacking in even the basic background in the subject and has to have even simple facts like this handed to them on a plate?
UPDATE 10.09.13
Instead of explaining the deep need of his artefact collecting readers for a simple story about Henry VIII's third coinage, Mr Winter has filched (his word) an idea from coiney Dave Welsh. He has now written a post justifying his position founded on the basic idea of flatulence, but with the original addition now of "pus". It seems beyond him to actually answer in any articulate form the issue raised (the conflicting visions of the depth of historical knowledge of artefact hunters and dugup artefact collectors). Fart jokes however any metal detectorist can manage.
TAKE A GOOD LOOK at this behaviour, for these are precisely the sort of foul-mouthed people the PAS wants to grab more and more millions of public quid to make into the "partners" of the British Museum, archaeological heritage professionals and to whom they want us all to entrust the exploitation of the archaeological record. Take a good look and decide what you think about that as a "policy".
