Britain cracks down on rogue treasure hunters

LONDON - Britain has launched a crackdown on rogue treasure-hunters in an effort to protect the country's ancient heritage.

Faced with a growing number of priceless artefacts appearing for sale on internet, museums, metal detectorists and archaeologists in England and Wales have agreed a new code of conduct.

The voluntary code comes after massive looting of a Roman-Celtic temple at Wanborough in Surrey in the mid-1980s and as customs officers seize ever more antiquities being smuggled out of the country.

"This code represents a major step forward," said Mike Heyworth of the Council for British Archaeology.

"Most detectorists are only interested in finding and preserving local antiquity ... and to make a positive contribution to our historical knowledge," he told reporters at the British Museum.

"There are just a few illicit detectorists motivated solely by profit." In recent years, amateur metal detectorists have unearthed invaluable artefacts like the Bronze Age Ringlemere Gold Cup, the Winchester Hoard of Iron Age jewellery and the bronze Roman Staffordshire Moorlands Pan.

But Roger Bland, head of the portable antiquities scheme at the museum, said unscrupulous detectorists were arriving from the Netherlands and the United States to search illegally for buried treasure which was then offered for sale on the internet.

"Most detectorists are highly responsible, getting permission from the landowner to search and reporting the fact and exact location of their finds," he said.

"But just a few aren't, and they are the ones doing the damage," he added, stressing that ignorance of correct procedure was as much to blame as the deliberate flouting of it.

Under the code, detectorists must get permission to search, join a recognised detectorists' club, log the precise location of any find and report it to the landowner - who has a share in any valuation - and to the portable antiquities scheme.

Steve Critchley, head of the National Council for Metal Detecting, estimated there could be between 20,000 and 30,000 detectorists in the country.

"While the archaeologists go for the big cherries, we detectorists tend to operate in the periphery and what we find adds significantly to the sum of knowledge - which is why it is so important to log it precisely," Critchley said.

"Every find adds to the picture. The danger is the lack of recording," he added.

Bland estimated that currently as many as half of the artefacts found - ranging from belt buckles to plates - might not be being declared.

- REUTERS