A Decade of Discovery

Edited by Sally Worrell, Geoff Egan, John Naylor, Kevin Leahy and Michael Lewis. In 2007 the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) marked its tenth anniversary by holding a conference at which speakers, both from within the Scheme and outside gave a series of papers that demonstrated the research potential of recording finds of archaeological objects made by members of the public. This volume contains papers given at that conference together with a number of other contributions. PAS started as six pilot schemes in 1997 and became a national network across England and Wales in 2003. The core aim of PAS has always been to minimise the loss to our heritage caused by the failure to record systematically objects found by the public – metal-detector users, amateur field-walkers and chance finders. The reason for recording these objects is to create a resource that can be used at many different levels as a resource for school projects purposes, for studying the history of one’s local area, or for academic research.