A Portable Antiquities Charter

Heritage Action announces on its new blog:

We have searched in vain for a clear expression of opinion by an official body relating to the moral issues which recreational and entrepreneurial digging for archaeological artefacts raise. We suspect that in Britain at least no such formal opinion has been published since the activity is legally sanctioned but also subject to recommended but purely voluntary preferred parameters, both implying a toleration of multiple and conflicting behaviours, this being a logical absurdity that cannot be expressed as a single moral position.To fill the gap, and to provide a basis for discussion, we have produced our own. We should be pleased to receive comments or suggestions for amendments.

The text is here. I expect they will be getting lots of congratulatory messages from artefact hunters and collectors and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.