FLO, the PAS and recording

Finds Liaison's Officers or FLO's are the people employed to record finds onto the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) Website. If you're a metal detectorist or indeed anyone else for that matter you should have a look at the PAS which is pretty much a giant database of finds.

Personally I can understand why it's important to record what you find. You only find the item once. Pull the item out of the ground and that's it, no second chance. Whilst people state* that finding the item in the course of an archaeological dig will lead to a better understanding of the context of the find the reality is that the majority of finds are made by metal detectorists outside of an archaeological dig.

*I say 'people state' because I do not know about archaeology to instantly think 'because it's an archaeological dig that means it gives more context than a detectorist finding an item.' I imagine that's the case but I like to make informed decisions.

There are as I understand it two ways that items get recorded. One is for Treasure type items, defined by the Treasure Act 1996, that people have a legal obligation to report. The other type of recording is voluntary recording in that FLO's like to record everything over 300 years old. I think it's important to be clear when talking about recording what you mean as when detectorists say they 'record' everything then from my experience this can mean just the items they are legally responsible for recording ie Treasure items rather than the voluntarily recorded items which are a far larger proportion of items that a detectorist will find.

As a metal detectorist I realise that if I just go home with my finds for the day and put them in a box then no one else will ever benefit from what I find. Whilst my original motives for detecting were quite selfish this doesn't mean that I don't like to share what I find. The more that I've detected the more I've enjoyed researching and sharing items I've found (not that many admittedly I guess).

Getting my local FLO to look at what I've found to see what they might want to record is great as they will be able identify stuff that I can't. Furthermore they then record the item and I feel that in someway I've added to the 'bigger historical picture' (again I appreciate that there are some doubts over the value of the PAS in this regard).

I can now use the PAS to look at the finds I've had recorded and I print these pages out and put them in a little folder. My aim is to have a really big file full of recorded pages. I think I might use my folder when looking for permissions as at least I can show a prospective landowner that I do try and detect in a responsible way so maybe by voluntarily recording items it's a win win.

You can find details of how to find your local FLO here

You can find the PAS here