“The hobby is growing at a very fast rate"

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There is jubilation in the latest UK Detecting Network Newsletter:

"The hobby is growing at a very fast rate at the moment, due in the main, to the big value finds that have been made recently. The hobby is being featured in the media on a regular basis and most clubs are reporting increases in membership.”

So..... is PAS pleased? ( Is the 'obby big enuff yet? Or do it kneed hexpanding a nundredfold?) Is "best practice" expanding with the influx of new members?

Is this what it's all about, getting more and more people emptying the archaeological sites in the fields of Britain into tens of thousands of scattered ephemeral personal collections and then further scattered through the antiquities market, with correspondingly lesser quantities of it getting recorded by an increasingly cash-strapped PAS which was not set up to do this anyway? Or should not archaeological outreach be trying to reduce the erosion of the archaeological record ? Resource conservation: now there's a novel idea, innit?
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