If reports coming in are true, things look pretty rotten in UK archaeology. Coming soon after the scandal where finds went missing from a museum storeroom while the PAS was processing some potential Treasure cases (which we're not supposed to talk about because again no charges were ever pressed - shhhhhh) we are told of yet another case. Artefact hunter "Stu" left a comment on my post 'More UK Detectorists Reporting Objects Missing When Curated by Portable Antiquities Scheme' (PACHI ):
I've just had some pieces returned. Lithics. There was a beautiful scraper in amongst them with gorgeous fossil inclusions. It's been taken and replaced with a broken shard of flint that i did not recover. It was not present when they were handed over. Someone has cherry picked the piece and switched it out with a piece that i definitely did not find. I know because everything was photographed before it was submitted. I won't be handing anything else in to Lancashire PAS in the future.PAS has been approached for comment, but at the time of writing, no response has been received.
It is hard to say quite what the truth is here, whether the find was somehow nicked or mislaid, or simply bundled up with somebody else's finds and they ended up keeping it. The thing is there is clearly a need for PAS to look at its procedures. Will they? How many times does this in fact happen in a year? Where and how?
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