Towards Updating the Artefact Erosion Counter

The original version of the Artefact Erosion Counter in the left margin of this blog was created in the middle of 2018 when there were thought to be 29000/30000 active detectorists in the UK. This figure now seems to have changed (https://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2025/03/when-are-british-archaeologists-going.html). 

The table looks like this (the square brackets indicate that we really can have no certainty about how many UK detectorists complied with lockdown regulations - the figures should be treated as nominal maximums) 

Year	No. of detectorists	No. of finds p/a
2018	29/30,000	907,500
2019	32,000	968,000
2020	33,000	[998,250]
2021	34,000	[1,028,500]
2022	36,000	1,089,000
2023	37,000	1,119,250
2024	38,000	1,149,500

Extrapolating, the figures it looks like there might be c. 39000 detectorists at the end of 2025 and at the standard rate, they will have found 1,257,750 recordable artefacts in this one year alone.

I will not set up a new counter at the moment, but it is clear from this that the existing one is ticking too slowly. Using the figures given above (and beginning by subtracting the c. 5,445,000 artefacts calculated at the 2018 rate), starting from the end of 2018 and ending on 31st Dec 2024 (and ignoring the issue of quantifying the Covid shortfall as unquantifiable) the counter should have counted off 6,382, 750 artefacts). So instead of at the very beginning of 2025 it should have read 19,389,186  objects/.

The PAS database today (four  months later) reads "1,802,884 objects within 1,165,711 records" for England and Wales. That's not looking good.