(Originally posted: 3/30/2012)
I’ve now had a chance to see SpikeTV’s “American Digger,” the second of the two new series about for-profit mining of historic artifacts. Sad to say (although not at all surprising), it is in many ways worse than National Geographic’s “Diggers.” My full review is on the other side of the jump.
This show features former pro-wrestler Ric Savage and his “Artifact Recovery Company”–three other guys (one of whom is his son) with metal detectors. The show began with a text shot stating that the series would document “their best digs and most spectacular finds,” which is both a bad sign and just the tiniest hint of a good thing. First, the good: anyone paying attention will realize that this series has just admitted that all the boring hours of finding nothing worth having have been cut out, and that the real life of a professional looter will be much less exciting. But now for the bad: most people watching pseudo-reality shows on SpikeTV won’t be paying attention. All they’re likely to see is a half-hour show (about 20 minutes once the commercials are cut out!) where guys with metal detectors find one exciting thing after another. On top of that, SpikeTV has peppered the show with exciting music and dramatic editing worthy of any Michael Bay movie. That doesn’t help to teach that learning about the past takes slow, methodical work.
The same text panel states that the firm digs hundreds of sites each year–which, of course, tells you exactly how much effort they put into each one!
This first episode was showing the “team” in southern Alaska, hunting for remains from the late-19th century gold rush, and they are careful to point out that the digging takes place on private property. Unfortunately, as with National Geographic’s show, there is no attempt to explain why those dates and private property is an important issue. At no point did anyone ever explain that there are strict legal constraints on what can be dug and where. In fact, the attempt to educate is even less here than with “Diggers.” A few factoids pop up on the screen but aren’t spoken verbally by the actors. Otherwise, we’re left with the impression that the artifacts are just money in a different form.
And, as should be obvious to anyone reading these posts by now, that is the major problem with these shows. If anything, though, this show offends even worse than its counterpart. The financial angle is brought up early and often. Ric Savage convinces the land owner (whom he approaches unannounced) to allow them to dig by promising to split profits. The profit splitting is also mentioned in Savage’s opening narration. The message is, “property owners: there’s money in your backyard. Don’t wait for this idiot to come by, just dig it up yourself and keep all the cash!”
And, unlike the other show, they did in fact find some things that were quite valuable. For two days of work, with four men in the field, the crew made $6000. A closing narration said they worked in Alaska for 7 days, and made about $20,000. Factoring in travel costs and dividing among four people, that would almost be worth it.
A few random comments, in no particular order:
- The team calls itself “the most successful artifact recovery company in the country,” completely forgetting the hundreds of professional archaeological firms and university & state offices that recover, no doubt, many times more artifacts every year. And, they do it scientifically and in the public interest–not to line their own pockets and inflate their own egos. Of course, as I pointed out in my last review, what these guys call “artifacts” are really “old things we can sell.” By their definitions, they probably do find more artifacts than archaeologists, because archaeologists waste all their time on writing stuff down and learning about the past!
- When first setting out into the field with their metal detectors, one guy says, “No one can say we don’t work for our money!” at which point I laughed out loud. These guys walked around in the snow with metal detectors for about six hours (according to the timestamps on the screen). Let’s see him use a hand trowel to spend three weeks meticulously excavating a house basin in 100 degree heat for a shovelbum’s salary and see who works harder!
- Ric Savage explained in the voiceover that, on the second day of work, they’d moved to a third location on the property, and when that was done, the site would be “tapped out.” They found five artifacts (that were shown on screen) in those two days. I suppose I should be happy that the thousands of artifacts and features that are undoubtedly still intact on the site were overlooked.
- One thing that was especially distasteful was the sequence at the beginning of the episode when Savage was speaking to home owners. The first several he spoke to refused him permission to dig on their property (thankfully!), but the editing made them look nasty and rude. The first woman, for example, answered the door quite politely, listened to Savage’s introduction, then told him firmly that she wasn’t interested. He continued speaking, the camera angle cut to a different shot, and the woman angrily declared, “If you don’t get off my property, I’m gonna call the cops!” To anyone paying attention and thinking about this objectively, it doesn’t seem likely that she went from polite to polite-but-firm to angrily threatening legal action in 15 seconds. More probably, Savage just wouldn’t take no for an answer (like all exploitative opportunists), and the scene was edited to make him look good and her crazy. The underlying message of the whole sequence was that no sane person would refuse Savage permission to dig up their land and loot their history.
All in all, this show is probably more dangerous than “Diggers.” The target demographic of SpikeTV is more likely to recklessly mimic what they see than the (at least somewhat more highly educated) National Geographic audience, and the show really pushes the exictement and profit angle. Likewise, when last I heard, National Geographic was at least promising a disclaimer and warning on its show. SpikeTV doesn’t seem open even to that much responsibility.
But no amount of disclaimers will make these shows good for archaeology and our historic heritage. Both shows need to die a quick and noisily public death, so that their errors can be turned into a teaching moment. We as archaeologists need to make sure that the public understands why we do what we do, and why it’s important.