Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme
Summary
The Portable Antiquities Scheme was established in 1997 to encourage members of the public to report all finds of archaeological objects. Metal detector users are responsible for finding an estimated 400,000 objects a year and hitherto the great majority of these have gone unrecorded because no organisation has had the resources to do this work. This represents a great loss of information about our past.
DCMS and HLF have been funding 12 pilot schemes covering rather less than half of England and Wales (the Scheme is not needed in Scotland or Northern Ireland where there is a legal obligation for all objects to be reported).
The pilot schemes have been very successful: over 30,000 objects have been recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website. Many new archaeological sites have also come to light as a result. The liaison officers have played a major role in encouraging co-operation between metal detector users and archaeologists, two groups previously at loggerheads.
There is now an urgent need to extend the network of liaison officers across the whole of England and Wales and this currently depends on the outcome of a lottery bid. In the meantime we need a clear commitment from the DCMS that they wish to provide long-term support for the Scheme at an adequate level. This could be done under the banner of Resource’s Renaissance for the Regions initiative which aims to establish a network of regional museum hubs which will receive direct Government funding via Resource.
Current position
Resource: the Council for Museums. Libraries and Archives submitted a lottery bid in May 2000 for three-year funding for a national network of 41 posts at a cost of £1.5 million a year. This bid has 63 national and local partners each of whom is contributing 10% towards the cost. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have had doubts about the bid and a decision is not expected until 23 April. HLF are concerned about the long-term future of the Scheme at the end of their period of funding. The only body that can guarantee that the Scheme has a long-term future is DCMS (local authority museums and archaeology services do not have the resources) and this needs to be taken into account in the current Government Spending Review, the outcome of which is expected in July. The total cost of the Scheme is very modest when set against its benefits.
Background
The Portable Antiquities scheme was established to complement the Treasure Act which came into force in September 1997.
The Treasure Act replaced the old common law of treasure trove, establishing a new, wider definition of treasure. It has led to a tenfold increase in cases from around 25 a year to 250 a year. (This has had substantial impact on BM which administers treasure; treasure work occupies the time of 8 full-time posts at the Museum.)
Great majority of archaeological objects found by the public, principally metal detector users, fall outside scope of Treasure Act which essentially only includes precious-metal objects and coin hoards. A 1995 Survey by Council for British Archaeology estimated that perhaps 400,000 archaeological objects were being discovered each year by metal detector users and that the great majority went unrecorded, representing a great loss of information about the past. Treasure finds account for perhaps only 5% of the total.
Since 1997 DCMS has been funding six pilot schemes to promote voluntary reporting of all archaeological finds; a further six posts have been funded by HLF since 1999.
Posts are based in regional museums; coordinated by a steering group of national bodies led by Resource, with backing from BM and EH and their Welsh equivalents.
Data about finds recorded is published on a website www.finds.org.uk which receives 80,000 page requests a month and is on the National Grid for Learning. Three annual reports and regular newsletters are published.
Scheme has a major role in developing Government’s and HLF’s agenda in education, access and social inclusion: finds liaison officers work with finders to educate them about the importance of recording finds; they promote opportunities for active involvement in archaeology; they hold regular finds days and exhibitions in museums. The data about finds is a major academic resource and has revolutionised our knowledge of, eg, Iron Age coinage.
Scheme plays a major role in supporting the Treasure Act and liaison officers have achieved a substantially higher reporting rate of treasure finds. Ministers have announced the intention of extending the Act to include hoards of prehistoric base-metal objects and this will underline the need for the Scheme to support the operation of the Act.
Scheme also makes an important contribution to our international commitments: to the Valletta Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage, to which we acceded last year, and to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Illicit Trade to which the Government intends to accede this year.
Ministers have hailed success of the Scheme on several occasions: eg in three published Annual Reports; in the speech you gave on the Valletta Convention in October and in The Historic Environment. A Force for our Future.
Resource’s regional museums initiative, which the Government has welcomed, proposes establishing a network of regional museum hubs in each of the English regions which would receive Government funding (Resource are asking for £267 million over 5 years from April; although the precise amount of funding available will not be known until the completion of the Spending Review in July). The aims of the Scheme are compatible with the aims of this initiative and Resource have agreed that it provides a framework on which a network of finds liaison officers could be based.
March 2002
