Registration for the ‘Portable Antiquities: Archaeology, Collecting, Metal Detecting’ conference on 13th and 14th March 2010, has now been extended to this Friday, 5th March.
The CBA is teaming up with Newcastle University’s International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies to organise and host a major conference titled Portable Antiquities: Archaeology, Collecting, Metal Detecting. This will take place in Newcastle upon Tyne on Saturday 13th March 2010.
The discovery of this hoard, the largest Anglo-Saxon Treasure find ever, has been announced at Birmingham Museum, following a coroner’s inquest. The hoard is quite unique as it has well over 1500 gold and silver objects. It is about to go on display and be valued.
A Guidance Note on metal detecting rallies has been agreed which makes important recommendations designed to limit the impact on the archaeological record.
This section provides an archive of the latest debates on portable antiquities in the United Kingdom.
2008
PAS Treasure Report. Discussions about the latest PAS Treasure Report (26 Nov 2008).
Iraq Looting Ends. The leading archaeologist in Iraq says that “professional looting has ended”, and “the black market in antiquities seems to have stopped”.
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.
The Portable Antiquities scheme was set up in the wake of the 1996 Treasure Act which not only gave protection to certain archaeological finds, but also encouraged their reporting.
Portable Antiquities Scheme The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales.
