The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) exists to record objects
found by members of the public and enter them onto an online
database. Since it began in 1997, PAS has recorded over 750,000
objects of all periods of history from Palaeolithic flints to
eighteenth-century coins and has become an important source of
new archaeological data to be used by students and academics in
their research. Initially based on a small group of pilot
regions, recording was extended to cover the whole of England
and Wales in 2003, at which point Oxfordshire became a part of
the Scheme with the employment of a local Finds Liaison Officer
(FLO) in the county. Alongside recording ordinary objects, PAS
also deals with objects which come under remits of the Treasure
Act 1996, which include gold and silver artefacts and coin
hoards. The Ashmolean has been officially involved with the PAS
since 2004 when the Scheme’s ‘National Finds Advisor for
Medieval and Post-medieval Coinage’ became a part of our
Heberden Coin Room. A further streng