FLO Encourages Ripping Apart Surface Sites

Some bloke found a gold coin so there's a puff-article for him from the BBC:

Alastair Willis, finds officer for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire [...] encouraged amateur detectorists to avoid digging into unploughed fields. "If you're on ploughed land, you're not disturbing the evidence that archaeologists need to date the material," he said.

I sincerely hope he did not and was misquoted. The 'material' IS the evidence, especially in the case of a surface site. Taking it away randomly to add to a private collection destroys sites, such the Willis quote is object-centric and totally ignores the aspect of site conservation.

But what this FLO-quote fails to reveal is that the record he himself wrote (DENO C5A99E) states quite clearly: Method of discovery: Metal detector General landuse: Grassland, Heathland Specific landuse: Undisturbed grassland - so 37-year old Gareth Millward was not doing it by the book, and was flouting the Code of Responsible Metal Detecting in England and Wales - it is a shame the FLO is not quoted as saying so in the article. 

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