Craig Gottlieb & "Nazi War Diggers"

[Johnny R]

20th century Battlefield Archaeology is still in its infant stage and has only been slowly accepted recently and reluctantly as academic archaeology to be honest. Many archaeologist still pooh-pooh it as not being "real" archaeology. The most notable work has been on WWI Battlefields by British and mixed Nationality teams. One notable WWII example was a study by Texas A&M on the German Fortification in Normandy and a Marine survey of the ocean bottom around Neptune Beach.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient...water_01.shtml

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-7k.htm

When you deal with journalists it is sadly normal for them to disregard most of what you tell them and to essentially hear what they want, make things more dramatic, change content even when you provide them with written summaries etc. This happens all of the time. I wrote an article once for a Journalist, she edited out the most important content, changed the facts and published it as something hard for me to even recognize.

I disagree with the want of fame and stardom. Most professional archaeologists want to not be in the lime light and not be hounded by reporters etc. For me, excavating human remains is the last thing I want to work with. We only do it in North America in cases where Highway construction will destroy human burial areas or if there is an unintentional discovery and a burial is half exposed in a construction wall. As far as I am concerned Craig is Joe Schmo and so are the other people doing this. I do not care who they are. If they want to go out in the forest and dig up mess kits in the mud and rain with a case of beer fine, but when you work with human remains that is a very different matter especially when you are posing with leg bones and skulls like they are newly unearthed toys.

[Bob Hritz]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

[Hagen]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

I'm with you. I have wondered where the line is ever since this thread started.

[J. Wraith]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

I get the sense that this is maybe a disingenuous comment designed to enforce your opinion that this is about a member of the team in particular as opposed to the moral question of digging up human remains or battlefield dead for the sake of entertainment television. Am I on the right track?. Because that is the point in reality, sure the poster boy for absurd behavior is involved but I would remind you that the Parchment people were the one's screaming with letters and petitions and I highly doubt they have any real knowledge of Craig. Personally, I have not bought ground dug anything but as a hobby guy and collector I am not alien to diggers nor their threads and items. That being said if they are out there digging there are lines of distinctions that can be drawn and television screens with shots of the most hated man in the hobby holding up your grand daddy's leg bone on National Geographic so Jiffy can sell peanut butter is clearly a moral outrage. Your defense of this man is a disgrace and is noted. I find your attitude to this whole thing as either missing the point entirely or complicit with the mindset of this type of scummy behavior. Which is it Bob?

[Mil-Archive]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

Personally I don't have an issue with shell casings or mess tins etc which metal detectorists find on or near a battlefield.

I do have an issue with personal items removed from unmarked graves and put up for sale by money grubbing ghouls.

I can see how it would be hard to precisely differentiate between the different categories of ground dug items however.

If there is no choice between either having a 'Free for all' or 'No ground dug at all' then I'd vote for No ground dug at all.

Ground dug intact dogtags for example should be immediately banned in my opinion.

[kefru177]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

Bob's trolling the thread again

[MMM]

Wihlst at least for the moment NG have appeared to have pulled the show; the 4 stooges have been conspicous by their absence. Its bedtime for bonzo I hope.

One of the stooges has more or less vacated his blog and replaced it with a holding page, 2 others have vanished without any trace and the only other is CG who I think takes the stance "any publicity is good publicity".

If so he needs to take a long hard look at himself, it has taken several years on WAF for him to be shown up and discussed for what he is; a liar; a crook; a faker; a charlatan and now a grave robber.

This is the guy that published a book about honour rings that was so inaccurate that the bottom fell out the HR ring market. This is the guy who presented altered daggers and claimed they were real, this is the guy who "found" a bogus Himmler school book, this is the guy who found a bogus "self authenticating" Mengele passort not to even count the "Hitler Deskset" and how many other humped up items he has placed in his auctions or on his website. How can anyone say he now has any standing in the community?

How can any collecting of 3rd Reich artifacts be taken seriously when people like this are self promoting "representatives" of it on news programmes or can be seen to"guide" or represent the hobby? He can no longer represent it in any meaningful way or be seen to be a leading dealer. We might as well have Dr Mengele as a representative and spokesperson for the hobby.

This is shown by some of the backswell on the widely read archaeological blogs that now suggest that only "neo nazis" collect nazi crap as a result of this affair, how long do you think it will take for that message to go away?

This guy has done more damage to the hobby in order to further his own ends than anyone else and also to have his face on the internet/tv more than any other when it comes to TR collecting; yet still here on WAF he has his "supporters club" that think he runs the "best" auction and is decent. Decent does not come into it; in the past those that criticised him were expelled en mass.

Its time to shut him down, do not buy from him, do not bid and have no dealings with him other to tell him and others what a worthless piece of grave robbing crap he is.

If I ever found that those remains he was clowing about with were those of my Grandfather in Law (who is MIA in that area) on his new but now cancelled show, I would not wish to be responsible for my actions should I ever come face to face with him.

Regards

MMM

[Seigfried]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

I'm with you Bob, I said as much in post 89. The 'ground dug' section is 10 years old yet has just 10,000 posts in only 185 threads. Even today there are ground dug items on the estand from Lithuania, and they are on hold.

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=731102

The big question is though - how do you prove where the items are from?

[Mil-Archive]

The big question is though - how do you prove where the items are from?

Would it not be up to the seller to prove it's not ?

[Seigfried]

Would it not be up to the seller to prove it's not ?

Yes it would but I cannot see how they feasibly could. I mean, what do they do - point to a hole in the ground and state that the item came from there? That would mean nothing, you couldn't even use an independent witness as verification, they could say anything for a percentage.

[Thorsten B.]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

That does not change for one second the fact that we see faces of a bunch of 21st century idiots posing with the remains of a fallen soldier.

Who do they think they are? They know no limits due to money interests and publicity?

Well, then they need to be shown these limits.

They should be sent out in areas of warfare and feel the heat and hell like those whom they are digging for - just to put things in the right perspective!

[Simon O.]

20th century Battlefield Archaeology is still in its infant stage and has only been slowly accepted recently and reluctantly as academic archaeology to be honest. Many archaeologist still pooh-pooh it as not being "real" archaeology. The most notable work has been on WWI Battlefields by British and mixed Nationality teams. One notable WWII example was a study by Texas A&M on the German Fortification in Normandy and a Marine survey of the ocean bottom around Neptune Beach.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient...water_01.shtml

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-7k.htm



.

Battlefield or confilct archaeology is, as you say a relatively new sub-discipline, and WWII achaeology by the professional establishment is even newer. What's been happening with WWI archaeology i feel can serve as an example and pointer to where it needs to head. The fact of the matter is, there are quite a few very knowledgable and experienced amateurs out there, but they lack the archaeological skills and resources, likewise, most archaeologists have little to no idea about WWII artifacts. The amateurs and proffesionals need to work together as has been done very successfully on the WWI battlefields. Some great TV has come from there and we will see a lot more i guess over the next 4 years for obvious reasons. I remember one program which included the discovery, identification and subsequent reburial of some British soldiers, actually refused to show human remains at all out of respect but still managed to make a great informative and entertaining program, that's the way to do it.

I've also seen professional archaeologists make a pigs ear out of a WWII dig, look up various episodes of Time Team, which in it's long history carried out several WWII digs including several aircraft recoveries. There was one program that was carried out in Normandy that showed good examples of the strengths and weaknesses of the proffesionals, excavating a German anti-tank gun site, they discovered where the trails of the gun had dug into the ground through stratigraphy, brilliant! on the other hand the same program included the misidentification of various common items like a bakelite box of decontamination tablets, one of the most common German personal equipment items you're likely to find.


Another aspect to all this is that in many peoples eyes in europe, stuff from WWII is just so much scrap, in some places it's still all lying out there in the open, not the attractive stuff of course, but the empty cases, ammo boxes etc. That is changing, and i've seen a big change in just the last 15 years or so, but to many that's all it is. So when does something from the past stop being rubbish and starts becoming something worth preserving? Come 2039, watch this space!

[Larry Davis]

Redux...The Nazi War Diggers!

Quote:

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If you mean that the show will now air in any form at all...I very much doubt it.







</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

I imagine the producers spent a ton of money on it and will most likely edit it and try to air it in a different light. There was another "reality" show called "Chasing Mummies" that was aired and had criticism like this but less and horrible reviews so the first shows were pulled and two professional archaeologists were brought in. My friend was one of the two people. They re-shot scenes, shot new footage and salvaged what they could.

Just wait...it's not over yet!!

Redux...The Nazi War Diggers!!!

[eldenwaff]

I will be asking the forum owner and moderators to stop the sales and discussion of all ground dug military relics. I think this should be done immediately because of the outrage over non professional archaelogist diggers who are not sanctioned by the 4 most prestigeous professional organizations. I hope all of you outraged collectors will be right behind me in this effort.

Bob Hritz

Did you by chance have some ground dug relics reserved for you by "the star" ?

[Kelly w]

Besides Simon and Jean, not many relic diggers collector's, buyers or sellers have spoke up to defend the action. Afraid to get thrashed in this thread, by keeping a low profile? And letting the anti ground dug relic loud mouths that are calling for the ground dug forum to be removed even doesn't create a stir?

I collect battlefield relics of which some might be ground dug and not afraid to say it. If I was living in Europe I would be finding my own, but since I can't I'll make do with buying them. Why do I like relics, well it's because they are a part of history. Something about finding relics from a certain location from a place in time is fasinating. And because I have several generations that were involved in both world wars. Now as pointed out most relics are surface battle discards, WW2 era trash dumps, pow camps etc. As some of the Youtube videos show there are organized groups looking for burial spots for 2 reasons. Find the fallen for identification and the recovery of relics. Much of East Europe has high unemployment and to pay people to do this by the government or their payment is in the sale of relics found with remains should be considered ok. A very few examples are the creeps that take the relics and kick the bones back into the hole and tell know one. Those must be stopped.

So I call out to people to keep an open mind about this. YEs CG is a fool, yes NG didn't do their homework before putting out that 10 minute trailer showing the lack of respect for the dead. But lets be fair, I rather see remains and the items dug up and found in the proper way also. And I want the fallen soldiers to be found and the historical relics to be recovered then all just left to rot and rust forever.