LONDON,ENGLAND.- The Treasure Annual Report published today shows that reported cases of Treasure can be expected to increase further with the expansion of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
 
From December there will be a network of Finds Liaison Officers across England and Wales actively working with finders to ensure the reporting of Treasure finds. A study in the latest Annual Report demonstrates that the presence of a Finds Liaison Officer can increase the number of finds reported as Treasure by up to five times.
 
Arts Minister Estelle Morris said: “ Once again this report demonstrates the success of the Treasure Act. It also shows how improvements to the Act and the work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme have led to a substantial rise in the number of significant new finds that would otherwise not have been reported.  I am also pleased to see that many objects are going to regional rather than national museums. This will enable people around the country to gain a greater understanding of their local heritage.   Every now and then a superb find like that of the Ringlemere gold cup reminds us of our hidden heritage - the treasure that lies under our soil waiting to be discovered. It brings the past to the surface and provides tangible evidence about the lives and skills of those who preceded us. We now have a framework in place through the Treasure Act which enables the significance of such finds to be properly assessed by archaeologists and historians. That adds immeasurably to the understanding we all have about the history of this country."
 
Among other developments:  •although the number of finds was slightly down on previous years, this was due to public access restrictions as a result of foot and mouth disease and the long term trend still remains upward; • the Treasure Act has recently been extended to include deposits of prehistoric base metal objects and a better Code of Practice; • the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a voluntary scheme enabling all archaeological objects found by the public to be recorded, has now been extended across the whole of England and Wales for the first time; • the work of Finds Liaison Officers meant that a number of finds were reported as Treasure that would otherwise not have been. • 78 local museums around England and Wales acquired Treasure objects in 2001. 15 were acquired by the British Museum.
 
Items reported included: • an early Bronze Age gold cup one of only two found in Britain and worth £270,000. The cup was found by a metal detectorist at Ringlemere, Sandwich in Kent, in November 2001. After further excavations at the Ringlemere site it is becoming clear that this was a place of early Bronze Age funerary and ceremonial activity. The cup has been acquired by the British Museum; • an early medieval imported enamelled gold finger-ring found by a metal detectorist in Warwickshire and worth £22,500. The ring has a gold cloisonne enamel bezel and may well be a product of a jeweller’s workshop in the Rhineland area. It dates from the last quarter of the 10th century. The Warwickshire Museum hopes to acquire this ring; • an Anglo-Saxon silver-gilt mount fragment chiefly decorated with a long-legged feline creature characteristic of 8th century Anglo-Saxon metalwork and sculpture and worth £1,600. The creature may represent a lion, perhaps the symbol of St Mark and the quality of decoration would suggest it may have been an ecclesiastical object. The fragment has been acquired by the British Museum; • 23 gold coins dating from the 1st century AD, found scattered within a single field in the Chelmsford area, and valued at £30,000.