The Portable Antiquities Scheme in
Suffolk has an active outreach programme. The two local metal
detecting clubs are attended monthly, the Finds Recording Officer
takes in finds from most members and plots each find onto digital
OS maps. The finds are then borrowed and recorded in time to be
returned the following month with their written descriptions and
copies of any drawings which have been done. Finders are also often
provided with individual maps of their fields, and can be lent hand
held global positioning devices to help them to plot each
individual find more accurately as they are detecting.
Talks are given to local groups and we often attend local history
events
and festivals where a finds display and identification service is
offered to members of the public. Local museums host Finds Days and
put on exhibitions of local finds recorded by the Scheme. Fieldwork
includes field walking with local societies and schools and also
geophysics and topography surveys have been carried out in
collaboration with Cambridge University.
The Suffolk Finds Recording officer is also involved in small scale
excavations, to
help the finders of, for example, Bronze Age hoards in order to
retrieve extra information about the context of the find. On a
larger scale we participated in Channel Four’s Time Team excavation
of a Roman Villa at Castle Hill Ipswich in 2003, and in the
community excavation of another Roman villa in Hitcham in 2006.
Metal detector clubs
Find out more about the Ipswich and District detecting club
at http://www.ipswichdetector.net/
which has an email contact page.
The other detecting club within Suffolk, the Mildenhall and
District Detecting Club, has the following officers:
Paul Flack – Chairman, Terry Lees – Treasurer, Mike Smith –
Subscription Secretary
and can be contacted by email
at paulflack@ukgateway.net
Metal detecting rallies
The Archaeological Service has recently issued some notes for
rally organisers -
click here for these (MS Word document,
25kb).