Issue 101

July / Aug 2008

Contents

news

Early Scottish gardens unturfed

Axes could be 0.5m years old

In the press

Listing lobby was no hot air

Kent Anglo-Saxon cemetery could be royal

Poetry to assist transfer of Hadrian's Wall collection

In Brief & Phase 2

features

The Copper Age
Special: did Britain have a fourth age?

Portable Antiquities
The Scheme must go on

Drawing Stonehenge
A major fieldwork project is explored by six artists

Severn estuary
Martin Bell describes the unique world of ancient mudflats

Gin Drinker's Line
Insights into WWII Hong Kong defence system

A Professional Mockery
Gary Lock on difficulties in obtaining "grey lierature"

on the web

Recommended websites
Caroline Wickham-Jones explores the realms of archaeological fiction and a look at Barwick-in-Elmet Historical Society's website

letters

your views and responses

CBA correspondent

Campaigns, comment and communications from the CBA
Mike Heyworth says it's time to think big – The CBA at Discover Archaeology LIVE, London Olympia

spoilheap

An exhibition to make you think (and a bog body)

Mick's travels & more travels

Mick Aston goes to Glamorgan in search of monasteries, and Jon Cannon tours south-east Wales

in view

New columnist Greg Bailey probes a coming major TV series – BBC's Bonekickers

my archaeology - NEW!

Neil MacGregor: The accidental archaeologist and new director of the British Museum

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

Portable Antiquities Scheme: too good to become history

Readers will know that the Portable Antiquities Scheme had been threatened with serious cuts. It was believed that a solution had been found that awaited only government approval. That has not been forthcoming: a review is to report later this summer. Mike Heyworth explains the scheme's exceptional importance and value.

At the end of last year, when the threats to the Portable Antiquities Scheme became clear, the cba contributed to a campaign which showed extraordinarily widespread support: from 225 MPs, who signed an early day motion (parliament's best supported motion on cultural issues – and there have been several parliamentary debates on the scheme); from five former arts ministers; from over 2,500 people who signed two epetitions on the No 10 website; from 16 leading archaeology professors, who emphasised their view that the scheme base should remain at the British Museum; and from 131MPs and 109 members of the public, who wrote to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The PAS is an extremely tightly-run and cost effective operation, where budgetary talk should be about growth. If further reductions are made, it will simply no longer be viable: the whole partnership on which it depends will fall apart. If the PAS folds, archaeologists will be forced to make the case for strong legal controls on the use of metal detectors. Thousands of people, many new to archaeological learning, would effectively be disenfranchised. An important and new stream of information about our nation's past would dry up. This would be a shameful conclusion to a project that has uniquely engaged a wide public with archaeology and history, and is admired and envied around the world.

How did we get to this point? Protection of portable antiquities is a continuing challenge everywhere. The unique solution adopted in England and Wales was to legislate over a limited class of "treasure" finds (essentially gold and silver, and hoards of coins and prehistoric artefacts), and leave the rest to a voluntary scheme which combines education and support with recording.

This replaced the feudal law of treasure trove, so inefficient that its removal was one of the founding aims of the CBA in 1944. We further showed how the huge increase in artefacts found since the introduction of cheap metal detectors in the 1970s had not been matched by a growth in recording (Metal Detecting & Archaeology in England, by Colin Dobinson & Simon Denison, CBA 1995. The Treasure Act was passed in 1996, and with advice fromthe CBA, the government set up the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), which was extended across the whole of England and Wales in 2003.

The scheme has three tiers of staff: 38 finds liaison officers based in local authorities andmuseums; six specialist national finds advisers, who train the FLOs in identification and recording, and guarantee academic integrity; and a central team of five based at the British Museum, who support and direct the whole project. The British Museum administers the scheme on behalf of the Museums, Libraries and Archives council (MLA),which provides funds from its government grant.

PAS staff are proactive, encouraging finders (principally, but not exclusively, metal detectorists) to bring their objects into museums to be recorded at finds days and other outreach events. The FLOs also help ensure mandatory reporting under the Treasure Act. In the Act's first full year, 1998, 201 treasure finds were reported, but the numbers leapt up after the PAS reached the whole of England and Wales: last year there were 744.

A key aim of the PAS is to educate finders on good practice and to encourage responsible behaviour. In 2006 the CBA helped to achieve the agreement of most leading detecting and archaeological bodies for a code of practice. This provided the first agreed statement on "responsible" detecting, and set a benchmark which is becoming increasingly important.

The heart of the PAS is its online database on which over 325,000 finds have so far been recorded (www.finds.org.uk). Four major research projects, 19 PhDs and over 30 other dissertations are already using PAS data. This is only the beginning: last year 77,500 finds were recorded from 6,200 individuals, including 3,900 metal detector users. Almost every issue of British Archaeology headlines important new artefacts and new archaeological sites being recorded by the Scheme.

The PAS is a unique partnership between a wide range of museums and archaeological organisations. The total budget in 2007/08 was £1.3m, and the 33 local partners which employ PAS staff make an additional 5% contribution of their own. Since 2003/04, while funding has increased onlywith inflation, the Scheme has achieved a 94% increase in the number of finds recorded in one year, a 73% increase in attendance at outreach activities (to 53,789) and a 280% increase in website usage. Note again: that was achieved with no real increase in funding.

Yet this year three out of the 49 posts have been lost, and the PAS has had to make over £100,000 savings in non-staff costs. Travel allowances for FLOs have been capped, which means they may have to cut their visits to metal detecting clubs and archaeological and local history societies; outreach activities will also suffer. There will be no money for development of the PAS website or for the archaeological illustration of finds, essential if they are to reach scholarly publications. Regional newsletters will cease. It will be difficult to fill posts as they become vacant, because it will only be possible to offer contracts until March 2009. One post, covering the important counties of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, has already been vacant for six months because of the uncertainty.

All this has happened because the government cut the MLA's 2008/11 budget by 25%. Its major resources are ring-fenced for its Renaissance project: though the PAS is directly in tune with that project's focus on public access, the DCMS has so far not approved use of Renaissance money for the PAS. The MLA has frozen PAS funding at last year's level.

The present uncertainty is extremely destabilising for the PAS: staff recently offered three-year contracts have been told that only the first year can be honoured. Only an additional £190,000 per year is needed to run the Scheme at an adequate level – a paltry amount in government terms.

If the government cannot or will not support the PAS, the visionary strategy that it embarked on in 1997, of giving legal protection to a limited class of treasure finds combined with a voluntary scheme to record everything else, has collapsed. No archaeologist could support a return to the earlier situation, where metal detecting was allowed unchecked without any mechanism to record what was found. The continuing loss of information would be enormous.

The summer's review of funding for 2009/11 should certainly show the cost-effectiveness of the Scheme. Will the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the MLA also recognise its huge cultural and social significance?

Mike Heyworth is director of the CBA.

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