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Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

It's not a 'government guidelines' it's law! For those interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996

And it's law for a reason. While interested hobbyists are often appreciated by archaeologists, there are quite a few people who are small-scale Schliemanns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann#Criticism). And with metal detectors being rather cheap, the damages these people cause do add up.

Yes! And the definition of Treasure given in the article is not only incomplete, but isn't the clause that would apply to these objects. (Bronze isn't gold or silver, but these are probably covered as multiple associated prehistoric base metal objects).

Quite funny they have this act considering they stole a lot of very rare and precious artefacts from India. Maybe they should return those too.

So what?! Finders keepers! Shut up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY

In fairness, the actual (slightly odd perhaps) phrasing is:

> When treasure is found, the finder does not own it, and it is illegal to try to sell it, according to government guidelines.

There could well be guidelines that say that, about the law ('it is illegal', as it says). HMRC has plenty of guidelines on what tax you owe and how to pay it etc. for example, but it also comes down to law at the end of it.

Huh, I wonder if they wrote that in after they looted dry their former colonies..

Why, what difference would it make? The law is that the crown (potentially) owns it, so assuming you're meaning that it's hypocritical... no not really? (Unless 'they' is 'the British people' who democratically/collectively looted and then later (or whenever it was) wrote laws?)

The NYT article is behind a paywall, but does the landowner gets something too?

Payments are ex gratia at the discretion of the Secretary of State, so in principle it's entirely up to them. There is a legally-guiding Code of Practice[0], though, which gives a starting point of 50% to the finder and 50% to the landowner. That proportion can change if there's an agreement about how to divide any spoils between the landowner and the finder in advance of the find, if there's misconduct on behalf of any party (e.g. trespass, failure to report in the legal time limits), etc. The occupier (e.g. tenant) is eligible too, sometimes.

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/treasure-act-1996...

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