On a metal detecting blog near you, metal detectorist Bill from Lachine (Montreal Canada) ponders the deeper meaning of the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme and wonders about its costs. He struggles to rationalise it like this (February 4, 2014 at 6:11 pm ):
I’m curious as to the total finds declared treasure under the PAS system what the total costs were of purchasing these items versus the total finds recorded under the system. I’m thinking it probably works out to less than $1.00 or 1 pound per hours expended time and energy not counting equipment costs, gas, etc…pretty cheap labour versus the payback in my books.First of all it is not "under the PAS system" that finds are declared Treasure, this is a totally separate process involving the Coroner and then the Treasure Valuation Committee (to which PAS only provides a supporting role). What an odd suggestion, that a FLO can work for less than a dollar an hour. Forty dollars a week for a UK professional? I cannot really see many takers there.
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| from the 2010 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) via wikipedia |
So what are the total costs to the taxpayer of buying back from greedy artefact hunters (who "aren't in it for the munny" you understand)? Well, oddly enough the amount of money made each year by their "partners" from hoiking and sale of Treasure and non-Treasure artefacts is nowhere collated by the British Museum's PAS and Treasure Team. The annual sum is however enormous with 8-900 being reported each year (though many are disclaimed and the artefact hunter gets the finds back to flog off or hide away). Let's have a look at a few found by metal detectorists and declared under the Treasure Act:
Bedale Hoard cost the nation’s museums £50000
Bitterley Hoard cost the nation’s museums up to £30,000
Bredon Hill Hoard cost the nation’s museums £40000
Collette Hoard cost the nation’s museums £???
Frome Hoard cost the nation’s museums £320,250
Stanchester Hoard cost the nation’s museums £50,000
Furness Hoard cost the nation’s museums £???
Hallaton Treasure cost the nation’s museums in excess of £785000
(plus the costs of conservation of the helmet)
Milton Keynes Hoard cost the nation’s museums £290,000
Newark Torc cost the nation’s museums £350,000
Ringlemere Cup cost the nation’s museums £270,000
Sedgeford Torc cost the nation’s museums £3,300
Shapwick Hoard cost the nation’s museums £265,000
Shrewsbury Hoard cost the nation’s museums £????
Silverdale Hoard cost the nation’s museums £110,000
Staffordshire Hoard cost the nation’s museums £3.285 million
Stirling torcs cost the nation’s museums £462,000
West Bagborough Hoard cost the nation’s museums £40,650
West Yorkshire Hoard cost the nation’s museums £170 000
Wickham Market Hoard cost the nation’s museums £316,000.
Winchester Hoard cost the nation’s museums £350,000
What about the less spectacular finds? The 2010 Treasure report (tab.) lists the finds made in that year and what happened to them. Some of the cases were not resolved at the time it went to press, but the general patterns of even these partial figures are clear.
Bronze Age hoards, 13 finds cost the nation's museums £3360
Iron Age hoards etc, 4 finds cost the nation's museums £50,170
Roman hoards etc. 36 finds cost the nation's museums £16,635 + £320250
Early Medieval hoards etc. 27 finds cost the nation's museums £30550
Medieval hoards etc. 50 finds cost the nation's museums £36409
Post Medieval hoards etc. 58 finds cost the nation's museums £17085
That comes to £474,459 for 188 finds.
So if we treat that as a typical year, in the past decade and a half, just paying off successful Treasure hunters to get back for the national collections the heritage of us will have cost upwards of 7 million pounds, excluding individual hoards of the rank of the Staffordshire hoard and the "Vale of York" hoard. Add to that how much it would cost to get other metal detected items, like the Crosby Garrett helmet (sold for £2.3 million) into a public collection and it can be seen that the costs to the public as a whole of the laissez faire antiquities laws of Britain are unacceptably large. That of course is not something one will see being discussed intelligently on any metal detecting forum, or indeed by their "partners" the PAS.
10 comments:
This is a valid point but I think we should differentiate between cost and expense.
All the finds listed have cost money but in a worst case scenario I imagine that this could be recouped through sale (in some cases at a substantial profit) whereas the expenses of running both PAS and the Treasure units are indeed losses to the public purse.
I have been fortunate enough to have made two Treasure finds in the England in the last couple of years plus about a dozen in Scotland claimed by the Treasure Trove unit in Edinburgh. I (and the landowners) have waived the right to any reimbursement for all of these finds.
It is possible that with finds of larger value (mine have totalled less than £2,000) there could be pressure to take the money and I feel that there should be either a maximum reimbursement figure on a sliding scale or that Treasure finds should be split perhaps 50% to the nation and 50% landowner/finder. It would be a start and would allow the museums to acquire artefacts at a fraction of market value.
Taking away all reimbursement could encourage unscrupulous finders to break the law and fail to report but I imagine that unscrupulous finders are already doing that.
"there should be either a maximum reimbursement figure on a sliding scale or that Treasure finds should be split perhaps 50% to the nation and 50% landowner/finder."
Of course, but sadly most of your colleagues - or at least the noisy ones - are intellectual thugs who will issue a seventeenth threat of a recording strike if it is suggested.
I'm not being deliberately offensive I'm stating how it seems to be. Were it otherwise it would have changed many years ago. The sooner you blokes with principles and intellect recognise your best interest lies together and away from the rest the better.
I have a room you can use for the inaugural meeting of the new Half Sensible Detectorists' Association if you like!
Or, we can all just carry on pretending, just like PAS do, that outreach will reach the parts it can't...
Big room, is it?
There are certainly very mixed messages presented to those who participate. The detecting press puts great emphasis on the historic worth in articles whilst filling pages with ads from dealers looking to buy and, in a recent edition, a manufacturer linking the hobby with the opportunity to run away to Las Vegas with the spoils.
It's a caravan on the M1, which is all that's needed for starters. It only needs a few people to strike out and say we don't want to be in a club we're too principled for and things will develop organically thereafter, trust me!
well done to john brassey,he sounds like a man of integrity and intellect,if only there were more MD like him.sadly the other %95 just claim as much as they can from the public purse and care nothing for the history they claim to cherish.
kyri
Well said John Brassey..!!!
A caravan on the M1 you say... Is there a Café nearby...???
Incidentally, are there any figures on how many Treasure finds have been made where the landowner and finder have waived their right to reimbursement...?
There are and they are not very easy to analyse, I did a post on it a while back. The PAS (as usual) presents the figures in a "spun" way to make their "partners" look good, rather than informing us about the real nature of the patterns.
Of course if its a five-quid button its easier to waive the reward than a 15000 quid torc.
"Of course if its a five-quid button its easier to waive the reward than a 15000 quid torc. "
That's absolutely true and for that reason I would propose a scaled compulsory contribution with a ceiling.
If detector users are to continue to have the privilege (and it is a privilege) to search, we must put more back into our heritage than what we do now which is a few conscientious finders recording their finds and a few donating them for a wider audience.
I don't know what proportion sell their finds, those I have met (only half a dozen or so as I tend to go it alone or with just one other) don't.
Both the Searcher and Treasure Hunter have a "what's it worth?" section several pages long in each issue, as well as an "auction roundup" about coin sales mostly, so I really don't think one can say there is no interest in the monetary worth of the things detectorists dig up. That's a myth.
I do not think you can generalise about selling, some people collect a "bit of everything" (or all of everything) and thus sell nothing. There are other detectorists who say they keep nothing, they flog it all off ("because finding it's the thing"). Somebody whose collection goes more towards the hammies and coins of various monarchs might get rid of the postmedieval buckles and modern military buttons, watch winders and furniture handles etc by sticking them on eBay.
Certainly there is a (legal) market in the UK for dugup artefacts and it is quite clear how most of those artefacts left the ground (and thus archaeological record) and ended up on eBay or in Timelines or wherever.
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