Metal Detecting: Britain’s self-harm deepens and no-one is doing anything about it.

PAS stopped accepting finds for recording last March and it seems unlikely they’ll have resumed by next March, but Let’s Go Digging is now enthusiastically arranging a string of rallies, including a fancy dress one with a hog roast at Christmas. Yet a mountain of unrecorded finds is building up.

PAS advises detectorists to hang on to them until they open up. But everyone knows even fewer than usual will be reported after a year’s delay, and anyway, a proportion of the mostly elderly finders will have left the field in the meantime.

“Responsible detecting” is stated to mean “no detecting without recording” yet non-recording is patently happening even more just now than before Covid 19 and pretending it will be put right next Summer involves a damaging untruth. So irrespective of law and Government guidelines and the inarguable health risks, detectorists should be left in zero doubt: no rallies should be happening just now.

Let PAS say so to all detectorists. and let Rescue, CBA, BAJR, ALGAO, EH, HE, et al say so in public and tell Parliament and Whitehall so. We know that’s what they all think

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The All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, who could influence the Government to everyone’s benefit, blinkered and hobbled by lack of proper advice.

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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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