| What is a Finds Liaison Officer? |
The Portable Antiquities scheme operates through a network of locally based ‘Finds Liaison Officers’, who can offer identification and recording services as well as advise on how to conserve archaeological finds and how to tell if what you have found may be classed as treasure . Since the scheme came into operation, over 100,000 objects, which may otherwise have gone unrecorded, have been examined by Finds Liaison Officers across England and Wales
Each county of England and Wales now has an F.L.O. whose role it is to identify the objects for the finder and then to record them, thus making the information available to both academics and the general public through means of a website. Contrary to popular belief, objects recorded under the Portable Antiquities Scheme are returned to the finder. It is this unawareness of museum practice in regard to personal finds that the Finds Liaison Officer is attempting to overcome..
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The Finds Liaison Officers role is dependant upon building and maintaining relationships of trust with finders, so they are encouraged to record their finds – an important part of their role is to make contacts with local finders, meet detectorists, and explain the aims of PAS so that more about the history and archaeology of the area can be recorded and made available. They do this by attending club meetings, seeing independant detectorists, and giving talks to local societies, colleges and other groups – definately not a 9-5 job!
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It is essential for them to record as much information about the find as possible – when the object was made, what it is made of, how it is decorated, whether it is broken, what it was used for.
Your local FLO will be able to offer you a wide range of services:
- indentifying your finds – either personally or after consulting a specialist
- recording your finds on the Finds Database
- giving you advice on conservation and storage
- giving you advice on the Treasure Act
- telling you about the importance of your find for the understanding of our history
- if you would find it useful, they will pass you a copy of the information they have recorded
They deal with huge quantities of finds from the Palaeolithic period onwards – Many of the objects fall into particular categories and are easily identified through their similarity with published examples, but unusual or unique objects are also well represented.
They have regular meetings and training days on artefacts of different periods.