Lockdown Gardening in Britain Leads To Archaeological Discoveries (nytimes.com) 66
Gardeners in Hampshire, a county in southeast England, were weeding their yard in April when they found 63 gold coins and one silver coin from King Henry VIII's reign in the 16th century, with four of the coins inscribed with the initials of the king's wives Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. From a report: The archaeological find was one of more than 47,000 in England and Wales that were reported this year, amid an increase in backyard gardening during coronavirus lockdowns, the British Museum said on Wednesday. In another discovery, in Milton Keynes, a town northwest of London, gardeners found 50 solid gold South African Krugerrand coins that were minted in the 1970s during apartheid. The news of the archaeological finds came as the British government said last week that it planned to broaden its definition of what constitutes a treasure so that more rare artifacts -- not just ones made of gold or silver, or that were more than 300 years old -- could be preserved for display in museums rather than sold to private collectors.
In Britain, many historical objects that are found and believed to be from the 18th century or earlier must by law be reported to local officials for review. If the object meets the government's definition of treasure, national or local museums have the option to acquire it and pay a reward, equivalent to the market value of the object, that is split between the finder and the landowner. Since 1997, the law in most of Britain has defined as treasure, and thus protected, objects that are made of gold or silver and are more than 300 years old, from before mass production began with the Industrial Revolution. But as the growing popularity of metal detecting as a hobby meant that more historical objects were being found, museums have missed out on items of archaeological significance that did not fall within the law's definition, including Bronze Age axes, Iron Age caldrons, and medieval weapons and jewelry.
In Britain, many historical objects that are found and believed to be from the 18th century or earlier must by law be reported to local officials for review. If the object meets the government's definition of treasure, national or local museums have the option to acquire it and pay a reward, equivalent to the market value of the object, that is split between the finder and the landowner. Since 1997, the law in most of Britain has defined as treasure, and thus protected, objects that are made of gold or silver and are more than 300 years old, from before mass production began with the Industrial Revolution. But as the growing popularity of metal detecting as a hobby meant that more historical objects were being found, museums have missed out on items of archaeological significance that did not fall within the law's definition, including Bronze Age axes, Iron Age caldrons, and medieval weapons and jewelry.
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Better them than Marvel... :-)
Sounds like the Time Team should do shows again! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know Sir Tony Robinson (aka, Baldrick) would be happy to jump back into the saddle!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sadly, there was a lot of animosity in the team toward the end, with some being asked to leave, and a pretty dramatic restructuring of the format which finally killed the show.
They did however launch the Time Team Classics channel on Youtube last week, which has a boatload of full episodes and seems to be available outside the UK as well!
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One of the items that did not meet the previous definition of âoetreasureâ was a Roman cavalry parade helmet from the first or second century found in 2010 by a metal detector user in Crosby Garrett, Cumbria. It was sold privately and is now in a private collection.
Even worse was the ancient Roman videotape [youtube.com] discovered by archaeologists in 2007, which ended up on BBC 2 instead of a museum like it should have.
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After Exxon-Mobil declares there's oil on your property, you'll be told it de facto belongs to them, and have to give up your house for free and have it demolished so EM can get their oil out.
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They put an oil well on my cousin's property, and he gets a cut of every barrel that comes out of the ground.
Yes, that is "rent" for the surface area they are occupying. Very few pieces of property in the US own more than a few feet below the surface. Long ago, the owners sold the surface rights and kept the mineral rights. Over the generations those mineral rights have been subdivided multiple times. So many times that a driller will have to find several thousand people per acre of land to be able to drill.
And yes, I grew up on oil country and made thousands of phone calls trying to find mineral rights
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Sometimes that works the other way around. Mineral rights were separated from surface property rights many decades ago. When the parcels of property being sold were entire land sections. As the land was repeatedly subdivided until you finally ended up with your quarter acre, the mineral rights stayed (or transferred) as contiguous larger blocks.
Mineral rights chopped up into building lot sizes sounds like some sort of scam. Nobody can pump oil or mine coal out of quarter acre lots.
Re: You don't own your own garden? Hah! (Score:2)
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After Exxon-Mobil declares there's oil on your property, you'll be told it de facto belongs to them, ...
Or Monsanto finding crops on your land wind-pollinated from their GMO plants on another property.
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Or Monsanto finding crops on your land wind-pollinated from their GMO plants on another property.
1. Monsanto no longer exists.
2. When Monsanto did exist, they never, not once, sued anyone for unintentional wind-pollination of crops.
3. The patents on most GMO seeds expired years ago.
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2. When Monsanto did exist, they never, not once, sued anyone for unintentional wind-pollination of crops.
Yes they did. There are 100ds of cases.
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Yes they did. There are 100ds of cases.
Yet you cited exactly zero.
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Yet you cited exactly zero.
So did you.
And you could start with: Monsanto does no longer exist :P
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Look at all those cases. Every single one was the farmer collected the seeds knowing they were the special roundup resistant seeds. He then planted then in (most cases) defiance of the contract the farmer had with Monsanto.
Like the McDonalds coffee cup, there is a lot more to the stories than what the poor 'abused' farmer claims.
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If you think so.
The McDonalds coffee cup is easy: in europe the case would have been dismissed.
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If you think so.
The McDonalds coffee cup is easy: in europe the case would have been dismissed.
I'd argue that McDonald's was pretty clearly at fault in that case. McDonald's coffee practices were reckless and unnecessarily hazardous to consumers. I'm glad the jury thought so too.
But if you're interested in the topic, you might enjoy the articles linked from this one: The legal perils of hot coffee – from the Circuit Civil Court in Dublin to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg [cearta.ie]
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The lady in question was a passenger in a car.
She put a paper cup between her legs.
When the driver started to drive she compressed her legs, and burned her legs and her "pussy".
The only one at fault is herself. And the coffee was not even hot by european standards.
Why someone is putting a hot paper cup of "whatever" between his/her legs, is beyond me.
Why sou think that is "normal" or "ok" is incomprehensible. Thinking it is McDonald fault is just plain stupid.
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You don't understand something. Legally, the Crown owns all the UK. They are not just figureheads, they are the real owners. Everyone else is tenant.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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Different Crowns, the Crowns of the Australian States and the Canadian Provinces own much of the land with the Federal Crowns owning a small (actually a large part of Canada, namely the northern territories) chunk.
Hearing about the California fires and how most of them are on Federal land seems weird to me as here in Canada, the Provinces own almost all the public land in the name of their respective Crowns.
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No, the Crown of England owns Australia, Canada, UK, .etc
Also has power over their their militaries too. Yes, there is person who acts in stead of crown in each place, doesn't change truth.
Scary stuff really.
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No the Crown of Canada owns Canada, the Crown of British Columbia shares ownership in my Sovereign Province, Australia is similar.
To quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although the person of the sovereign is shared with 15 other independent countries within the Commonwealth of Nations, each country's monarchy is separate and legally distinct.[24] As a result, the current monarch is officially titled Queen of Canada and, in this capacity, she, her consort, and other members of the Canadian royal family undertake public and private functions domestically and abroad as representatives of Canada. However, the Queen is the only member of the royal family with any constitutional role.
The official stuff, https://www.canada.ca/en/canad... [canada.ca].
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There are parts of the Shetlands and Orkney (and The Isle of Man, which strictly speaking is not part of the UK) that are not Crown land, but rather held under Udal law.
Otherwise, the King (George III) signed over most all Crown land to Parliament in the 18th century and it is similar to most land in America, where people don't really own their land, various levels of government can use eminent domain to claim it and various levels of government can tax it, and if those taxes are not paid, it reverts back t
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It wasn't ownership that George III signed away, it was income and responsibility which went to treasury but crown got a guaranteed payment (civil list). The crown still owns UK, Canada, Australia, etc.
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In theory. In practice, the governments control the land and if the Queen said otherwise, we'd fire her.
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No, you people don't have the means nor courage to get rid of the royals that in reality own you. If bad enough things happen in this world they'll resume the norm of absolute monarchy.
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We like our Queen. OTOH, remember what happened with her uncle the fascist. It was settled back in 1688 that Parliament is Supreme and nothing has changed that since.
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We have a constitutional monarch, meaning that although some of this ancient stuff is technically true it has no baring on the real world and if such powers were ever exercised it would cause a constitutional crisis.
We should still get rid of them anyway but practically speaking land ownership is a real thing in the UK.
I would be a retard. (Score:2)
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if you want to get out of your little corporate life but call uni about artifacts then you're not smart. What you do is make money off the artifacts. Two hundred years from now it won't matter what you did.
stolen property or archaeology (Score:4, Interesting)
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If buried gold coins aren't 'treasure' I don't know what is.
Re:stolen property or archaeology (Score:4, Informative)
Check your conjunctions. From the summary:
Since 1997, the law in most of Britain has defined as treasure, and thus protected, objects that are made of gold or silver and are more than 300 years old...
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and doesn't make much sense to me since many ancient artifacts of value are not gold or silver.
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Damn, now I have to actually RTFA and follow thru to the authoritative source [finds.org.uk].
I think the point of their broadening the definition was to include those older artifacts that weren't gold or silver. Hence the examples of the cauldron, etc.
They just threw that Kruggerands bit in there for spice. That isn't treasure in the official sense, it was somebody's stash. Digging around, the museum that has those coins is hunting for the original owern or their heirs.
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Plus, IIRC, Krugerands became illegal to own in the UK. In that case, these Krugerands are illegal booty and subject to confiscation by the Authorities. It played out like that in the USA also.
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A Kruger Rand from 1970 is 50 years old, not 300, so not a treasure.
Wow, that was so easy.
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Taxation is theft, so, yes.
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Strictly speaking, William the 1st got it by right of conquest, unlike much of America which was literally stolen by fraud (not honouring treaties)
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Well, you did say the last 1000 years. And bastard was a descriptive, as in born out of wedlock, though they were all bastards in the other meaning back then.
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It does raise the question of how being called a bastard then would be taken. Perhaps it was more descriptive then derogatory?
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Well, if it was the women who named him Robert the Magnificent, perhaps not :)
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He wasn't bothered by it. He was a bastard. His father acknowledged him as his bastard. His father's enemies made repeated attempts to kill him (by subtle assassination and by main force) which is probably why he grew up to be a bit of a bastard (by 20th century behaviorial standards) before inheriting his father's dutchy.
Clearly, being a bastard was no major impediment to being a (sufficiently) legal heir
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if i dug up a cache of gold i would keep it a secret, and just sell a few a year anonymously to collectors to improve my financial status,
Personally I'd just melt them down and sell the gold for the value of the gold. No way the government can steal it from me in the guise of "preserving history" that way.
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The government pays market value for treasure (to be split 50/50 between the finder and land owner) and the market value of coins is usually more then the gold is worth melted down.
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I think the op had in mind something like a cache of Krugerrand's or something else modern.
Personally I would tell the person that owned the land just to be on the safe side it wasn't some great grand parents long lost buried savings or something, but I can see someone just melting it down if it looked worthless otherwise and pocketing all the spot value.
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Even then, its not like they have serial numbers. Besides, showing up and trying to sell plain gold ingots in any quantity is likely to raise suspicion as well. If there was no obvious owner, like if it was found on someones land, it would be tempting to keep them to sell.
I'm assuming that Krugerrands' are now legal.
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Oh no, people melt their own bars all the time and sell them, pawn shops do it for junk jewelry to separate the precious metals. Its way easier to sell a bar of solid gold than junk rings or coins in the gram/oz levels online for people wanting gold just for savings....but yea obviously if you have millions worth even online you will raise enough suspicions if you tried to sell immediately.
Throwing ethics aside, if I was just interested in dodging paying tax because it was millions worth....I would probably
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I obviously don't know much about selling gold, and the taxman is something I didn't consider and needs to be considered.
crucible (Score:2)
Explains a lot (Score:1)