Advocating a more archaeologically minded approach to hobby metal-detecting
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-08-13

For 20 years the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) has been working with the metal-detecting community. In that time great strides have been made, with large numbers of detectorists now willing to engage with archaeologists to record their finds and work alongside archaeologists in other ways. Also, has been developed a Code for Responsible Metal Detecting, outlining (for the first time) a base-line for best practice, and (through the HLF funded PASt Explorers project) a mechanism for detectorists and other people to be trained to record their own finds directly on the PAS database.
However, it remains a frustration that many detectorists still refuse to engage with the PAS, seemingly happy to relish in the contribution of metal-detecting to our knowledge of the past but not actual add to knowledge themselves. This paper explored the dichotomy between those detectorists who are keen to contribute to archaeological knowledge and those that do not, and ask the question ‘what do archaeologists do about that?’

Michael Lewis (British Museum)