MUSEUM RECOGNISES DETECTORIST CONTRIBUTIONS

David writes:

They have been derided as cultural vandals or nerds in army surplus who spend hours in frozen fields to find only ring-pulls from beer cans.

Now, however, metal detectorists have been recognised by the British Museum as having transformed knowledge of Roman Britain by finding and reporting the vast majority of more than half a million artefacts, leading to the identification of 1,000 new sites.

The museum said that Roman finds account for more than a third of the 1.48 million artefacts in the database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), launched in 1997. This is a voluntary programme it runs to document objects found by the public that would otherwise go unrecorded. Most finds do not have to be declared under the Treasure Act, which applies to precious metal finds and coin hoards.

Experts said the “sheer abundance” and diversity of Roman finds compared with those of other periods up to the scheme's cut-off date of 1650 is a sign of the fundamental changes in Britain under Roman rule, from AD43 to about 410.

The discoveries have revealed more than 1,000 Roman sites in England and Wales, often in places where archaeologists were not looking. While the objects include artworks, inscribed bronze tablets and military equipment, many sites have been identified by clusters of low-value coins that are individually unremarkable.

More than 320,000 of all the Roman finds are coins, including scores of types that were not previously known. “By looking at the chronological profiles of coin finds in different regions, we see enormous variation in coin use,” Mr Moorhead said. These reflect the varying extent of Roman military and economic activity in different places.

A new book highlights the 50 most interesting finds from the scheme, from a bronze bust of Marcus Aurelius to a figure of an African slave boy. The artefacts in the book 50 Roman Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme by John Pearce and Sally Worrell, from Amberley Publishing, show both exotic new influences in Britain and objects in hybrid Roman-British styles demonstrating continuity with local pre-Roman cultures.

The scheme's database of almost 1.5 million finds is the largest of its kind and its database of Roman coins the largest single numismatic dataset in the world.

To read the complete article, see:
Detectorists helped us find Roman Britain (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/detectorists-helped-us-find-roman-britain-g6wn3cqdp)

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