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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8166398, member: 128351&quot;]OK let&#039;s be realistic. All countries have laws about hoards and treasures. In the Muslim world they even have treasure acts since the middle ages, saying who is the legal owner of a &quot;<i>rikaz</i>&quot;, a hoard (it depends of circumstances of the discovery, if it&#039;s a muslim or non-muslim hoard, if it&#039;s found on inhabited land or in abandoned ruins, etc. In any case, if no lawful owner or heir can be found, there is 20% that must be distributed to the muslim people present when the hoard was found). In France the law since Napoleon says that a hoard must be divided 50% for the owner of the land, 50% for the inventor (the person who found it), with a modification in 1941 saying that if the discovery is of historical interest it&#039;s state property and the owner and inventor get fair compensation. In all countries lawmakers never thought it necessary or interesting to adopt the English laws in this matter, not more than driving on the wrong side of the road or having neon pink live jelly for dessert. </p><p>In my personal opinion, the principal effect of this English law is encouraging amateur metal detection and make clandestine excavations legal. Let&#039;s be realistic, again: for one detectorist who is an honest law-abiding citizen and will scrupulously declare what he found to the competent authorities, how many will not tell anybody to avoid having to share? Would British archaeologists swear on their ancestors&#039; bones that these laws are good and amateur detectorists taking the metallic material out of archaeological sites not a scourge for archaeology? </p><p>It seems to me the problem with such laws is that they are more pro-business than pro-science. In Israel and Palestinian Territories they used to have very pro-free-market laws at the beginning. I remember buying there in 1978 a bronze age dagger, they just asked me to give my name and passport number to be registered, and it was OK for me to carry it home. They have changed the law since, and adopted more restrictive ones stating all newly discovered antiquities are state property.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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