[MSN] Museums, metal detectorists and archaeologists in England and Wales on Tuesday agreed a code of conduct to try to protect the country's buried treasures from being plundered by the unscrupulous or the unaware.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

May 08, 2006   
 
Code of conduct agreed

Museums, metal detectorists and archaeologists in England and Wales on
Tuesday agreed a code of conduct to try to protect the country's buried
treasures from being plundered by the unscrupulous or the unaware. 

The voluntary code follows the massive looting of the Roman-Celtic temple at
Wanborough in Surrey in the mid-1980s and with customs officers seizing
increasing numbers of undeclared historical artefacts being smuggled out of
the country. "This code represents a major step forward," Mike Heyworth of
the Council for British Archaeology told reporters at the British Museum.
"Most detectorists are only interested in finding and preserving local
antiquity ... and make a positive contribution to our historical knowledge,"
he said. " There are just a few illicit detectorists motivated solely by
profit."

In recent years amateur metal detectorists have unearthed, declared and been
rewarded for some invaluable ancient artefacts like the Ringlemere Gold Cup,
the Winchester Hoard of Iron Age jewelry and the bronze Roman Staffordshire
Moorlands Pan.

But Roger Bland, head of the portable antiquities scheme at the museum, said
unscrupulous detectorists were arriving from the Netherlands and the United
States to search illegally for buried treasure which was then offered for
sale on the Internet. "Most detectorists are highly responsible, getting
permission from the landowner to search and reporting the fact and exact
location of their finds," Bland said. "But just a few aren't, and they are
the ones doing the damage," he added, stressing that ignorance of correct
procedure was as much to blame as the deliberate flouting of it.

Under the code, detectorists must get permission to search, join a
recognized detectorists club, log the precise location of any find and
report it to the landowner - who has a share in any valuation - and the
portable antiquities scheme. Steve Critchley, head of the National Council
for Metal Detecting, estimated that there could be between 20,000 and 30,000
detectorists operating in the country making a valuable contribution to
local and national historical knowledge. 

Reuters