[A download/print PDF version can be found at the end of the paper]
This is a first for The Big Book of Torcs. Today, I open up BBoT to a guest blog, written by a friend and archaeological colleague. For various reasons, the writer of this blog prefers to remain anonymous, but I can vouch for their credibility, knowledge and insight.
It’s a great blog and so, without further ado, I will hand the page to them. Enjoy!
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Introduction
Metal detecting in England and Wales is now an established feature of public engagement with archaeology, often celebrated in the media for its contributions to the national record through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). Yet behind this narrative lies a profound imbalance between private leisure and public cost. The archaeological consequences of unregulated detecting, the financial burden on museums and heritage services, and the limited capacity of the PAS together reveal a system that is environmentally, economically, and intellectually unsustainable.
This article is an addition to Tess Machling’s recent posts about metal detecting and its place in modern archaeological practice (2025a; 2025b). It places modern detecting within a longer history of collecting, contrasting it with the planning principle of preservation in situ, which is the normal standard for threatened archaeology, and argues that reform is urgently needed. It concludes that criticism is routinely directed at the PAS, which remains an under-resourced mitigating scheme, rather than at the unregulated hobby that drives the problem.
From Cabinets of Curiosity to Commercial Hobby
The antiquaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, figures such as John Aubrey, William Stukeley, and Sir John Evans, assembled artefacts to study and preserve them for posterity. Their cabinets of curiosities were the forerunners of modern museums and were motivated by civic humanism and an emerging scientific interest in the material past. Objects were classified, drawn, and compared, and many were eventually bequeathed to public institutions. Modern metal detecting, by contrast, prioritises discovery, basic identification, and personal ownership above interpretation. Detectorists frequently describe themselves as ‘saving’ history, yet the act of recovery often divorces an artefact from its archaeological context and from any interpretive framework that might give it meaning in the archaeological record. The transition from curation to commodity marks a cultural shift: what was once an exercise in intellectual curiosity has become, in many cases, a pursuit of market value and social visibility.
Scale and Structural Imbalance
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) recorded more than 74,000 finds in 2023, of which 95 per cent were discovered by metal detectorists (British Museum 2025). Estimates suggest that between 25,000 and 40,000 individuals actively participate in the hobby, yet only a fraction consistently record their discoveries. Studies by Hardy (2017) and Machling (2025a) indicate that as much as 90–96 per cent of recoverable artefacts may go unreported. The consequence is a paradox: the PAS has produced one of the largest digital archaeological archives in Europe, but it represents only a small portion of what is being removed from the ground each year. The scale of the unrecorded material loss is impossible to measure but is undoubtedly vast, raising fundamental questions about the sustainability of the present voluntary model.
Rallies and the Industrialisation of Discovery
Large-scale detecting rallies epitomise the industrialisation of a pastime once characterised as individual exploration. Detecting rallies, such as Detectival, attract hundreds of participants from across Europe, each paying to search pre-arranged farmland for a weekend. Lewis and Heyworth (2021) have argued in ‘British Archaeology’ that such rallies ‘pose a significant risk to heritage’ and generate recording burdens far beyond that which the PAS can manage. Wessman (2022) similarly describes them as examples of ‘industrial-scale extraction with limited oversight and ambiguous responsibility.’ Rallies invert the ethos of early antiquarian collecting. They commercialise access to land and the act of discovery itself, while the resulting artefacts enter private circulation or are sold online. The costs of documentation, conservation, and the acquisition of Treasure are left to the public sector, generally without detailed planning on how that can be funded. Rallies themselves generally operate within micro cash economies, lack independent or transparent scrutiny of income, expenditure, or the charitable donations that many rallies advertise.
Public Burden for Private Benefit
The PAS employs around forty Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs) in England and Wales, responsible for recording tens of thousands of finds each year. These individuals, based within museums and local authorities, also conduct outreach and educational work. As Machling (2025a) observes, FLOs are often underpaid, over-extended, and subject to unrealistic expectations from finders. Despite this, public criticism tends to fall not on the hobby but on the PAS itself, accused of inefficiency or bureaucracy. Yet the scheme was never designed to cope with the industrial scale of modern detecting. Its overstretch reflects the unregulated expansion of the hobby, not institutional failure. The PAS functions as a state-funded buffer, absorbing the consequences of mass private metal detecting at the cost of the archaeological record.
Away from the PAS, public funding is often necessary for the wider archaeological work needed when significant archaeological objects or contexts are discovered, whether Treasure or not. These unplanned, uninvited situations often demand immediate attention from the wider professional archaeological community. Large scale projects, such as geophysical survey, professional excavation and post excavation analysis, in association with conservation, long term care and storage, are expensive, time consuming, and require professional, and expensive, responses.
The Cost of ‘Treasure’
Under the Treasure Act 1996, any objects that museums wish to acquire must be assessed at market value, with rewards divided between finder and landowner. Machling’s (2025b) analysis of Treasure Valuation Committee records shows more than £7 million was recommended for payment in 2023, compared with £2 million the previous year. Over the past six years, approximately £12 million in public funds has been distributed as rewards, This equates to the salaries of more than 200 curators. Museums unable to raise funds must disclaim finds, which are then sold privately. In Machling’s words (2025a), Britain is ‘buying back its own history from hobbyists holding it to ransom.’ The situation is this; public institutions, already struggling with major funding cuts, are required to purchase the very heritage that public policy encourages detectorists to find. In addition, it is often left to FLOs to advocate on behalf of objects that might otherwise go to private sale. Meanwhile, these figures reflect only the commercial value of objects that are brought into public ownership. In 2022 only 26 per cent of reported Treasure cases were acquired, with 5 per cent being donated; in 2023, 24 per cent of Treasure cases were acquired, with 4 per cent being donated (DCMS 2024; 2025). Most Treasure cases are disclaimed: returned to private ownership to be held in personal collections or sold on the open market. Often such objects are disclaimed not because they lack archaeological value, but because museums lack the funds to pay the ‘reward’ to the finder and landowner.
Planning Policy and the Principle of Preservation in Situ
National planning guidance underscores how far detecting diverges from current archaeological best practice. The National Planning Policy Framework (MHCLG 2023) identifies archaeological remains as ‘irreplaceable resources’ that must be conserved ‘in a manner appropriate to their significance.’ Paragraph 207 requires professional desk top assessment and field evaluation before any disturbance, while paragraph 212 emphasises that ‘great weight should be given to the asset’s conservation.’ Historic England (2022) defines preservation in situ as the preferred approach to safeguarding archaeological remains: disturbance should occur only where avoidance is impossible. Yet detecting operates entirely outside this framework. Artefacts are removed without assessment or mitigation, their contexts destroyed before professional recording is possible. The planning regime requires developers to preserve archaeology in place; hobbyists are exempt from comparable responsibility.
Misplaced Criticism: The PAS as Scapegoat
When delays in recording occur or when museum acquisitions falter, public frustration often targets the PAS rather than the detecting community. Social media and tabloid coverage repeatedly characterise the scheme as ‘not fit for purpose,’ ignoring that its purpose is to mitigate, not manage, an unregulated extractive industry. Machling (2025a) documents how some finders threaten to withhold further finds from recording when dissatisfied with valuations or timescales, a practice that further undermines the public record. Lewis and Heyworth (2021) likewise identify the unsustainable expectation that FLOs can manage both daily recording and mass rally outputs without extra resources. To fault the PAS is to mistake symptom for cause: the system’s dysfunction originates in legislative weakness, not administrative inadequacy.
The Afterlife of Private Collections
The long-term fate of privately held artefacts compounds the problem. Daubney’s Afterlife of Private Collections project (2022) for Historic England found that most detectorists had given little thought to what would happen to their finds after death. With the first generation of detectorists now reaching old age, the study estimates that at least 1.5 million recorded artefacts have returned to private hands. Thousands more unrecorded items remain in sheds, boxes, or drawers. Few collectors make formal arrangements for their assemblages, and many assume that museums will automatically accept them. In practice, museums rarely acquire bequests without clear provenience or documentation, since contextless objects possess limited research or display value. As Daubney (2022, p. 25) notes, uncontextualised artefacts cannot be meaningfully integrated into museum collections. Even when the objects themselves survive, the personal narratives attached to them die with their owners. Without mechanisms for transfer or community curation, much of this material—recorded at public expense through the PAS—will ultimately be lost.
Policy Reform: Realigning Incentives with Preservation in Situ
If the principle of preservation in situ underpins archaeological policy, detecting must be brought into alignment with it. Several measures would achieve this: licensing with ring-fenced fees to fund the PAS and museum acquisitions; mandatory training and accreditation; universal reporting extending statutory duties beyond Treasure; rally regulation with professional oversight; and a cultural shift encouraging donation rather than reward. As Machling (2025a) argues, ‘detectorists should begin contributing to the national costs incurred for their hobby.’ Reforming the funding and regulatory environment would protect both archaeology and the PAS itself from the unsustainable pressures of unchecked growth.
Conclusion
Where the antiquaries of the Enlightenment were custodians of the past, many modern detectorists have become its prospectors. The ethical inversion is stark, private gain: public cost. Each year tens of thousands of artefacts are removed from the ground. The state then pays to record, conserve, and often purchase them. It is not the PAS that is unfit for purpose, but the laissez-faire system that forces the wider heritage sector to fund and manage what has become unmanageable. To be clear, while many detectorists are proud of the contribution they make to archaeology, often citing the cost of equipment, travel and the time they spend on their hobby, this is something they have chosen to do; not something that any heritage professional or archaeologist has asked for. The archaeological record is a finite resource that will, one day, be exhausted. Meanwhile, the hobby fits within none of the established archaeological research frameworks that direct research agendas. The output from detecting demands responses from archaeologists that are unsolicited, uncosted, unfunded, unstaffed, and, from an archaeological perspective, often unethical. Archaeologists have abdicated responsibility for dealing with metal detectorists to the PAS for perhaps too long.
A balanced framework of licensing, training, and cost-recovery would align metal detecting with national planning policy and restore fairness between public and private interests. It is not the role of the PAS to put that in place; they rightly remain a mitigation strategy, not a campaigning organization. Until then, Britain will continue to buy back fragments of its own history, crowdfunding the past one artefact at a time. Should we really have to pay for things we already own?
References
British Museum (2025) Portable Antiquities Scheme Annual Report 2023. London: British Museum.
Daubney, A. (2022) The Afterlife of Private Collections. Historic England Research Report 52/2022. London: Historic England.
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (MHCLG) (2023) National Planning Policy Framework. London: DLUHC.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 2025. Reported Treasure Finds 2023 and 2024: Statistical Release (published 6 Nov. 2025). London: DCMS.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 2024. Reported Treasure Finds 2022 and 2023: Statistical Release (published 26 Nov. 2024). London: DCMS.
Evans, J. (1881) The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain and Ireland. London: Longmans.
Hardy, S. (2017) ‘Quantifying the under-reporting of metal-detected finds,’ Internet Archaeology, 45.
Historic England (2022) Preservation in Situ: Conserving Archaeological Remains. London: Historic England.
Lewis, M. and Heyworth, M. (2021) ‘What to do about metal-detecting rallies?’ British Archaeology, Jan–Feb 2021, pp. 30–35.
Machling, T. (2025a) The System is Broken, So Why Are We Not More Concerned? Big Book of Torcs (blog). https://bigbookoftorcs.com/2025/10/27/the-system-is-broken-so-why-are-we-not-more-concerned/
Machling, T. (2025b) Looking for Treasure… Big Book of Torcs (blog). https://bigbookoftorcs.com/2025/11/04/looking-for-treasure/
Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) (2024) Guidance for Organisers of Metal-Detecting Rallies. London: PAS / British Museum.
Sweet, R. (2004) Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: Hambledon and London.
Wessman, A. (2022) ‘Metal-Detecting Rallies: Characterising the Phenomenon, Understanding the Challenges, and Identifying Strategies for Heritage Protection,’ Advances in Archaeological Practice, 10(4), pp. 381–393.
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