How treasure law works

The law usually explains why a hoard ended up in a particular museum. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the Treasure Act 1996 decides which finds belong to the Crown; a museum can then acquire them by paying a reward to the finder and the landowner. In Scotland a much older common-law rule makes almost any ownerless antiquity the Crown's to claim. Most of continental Europe treats archaeological finds as state property, and many countries license or ban metal detectors outright.

This is a reader's guide with links to the legislation, not legal advice.

The Treasure Act replaced the medieval law of treasure trove from 24 September 1997. Treasure trove covered only gold and silver hidden with the intention of recovery, which forced coroners to guess at the motives of the long dead. Under section 1, treasure includes:

The 1996 definition missed a whole category of important finds: Bronze Age hoards of copper-alloy axes and spearheads contain no precious metal. The Treasure (Designation) Order 2002, in force from 1 January 2003, added two classes: any prehistoric object (other than a coin) any part of which is gold or silver, and any prehistoric base-metal object found as one of at least two such objects in the same find. In practice "prehistoric" runs up to and including the Iron Age.

The Treasure (Designation) (Amendment) Order 2023 (SI 2023/404) was made on 30 March 2023 and came into force on 30 July 2023, four months later. It does not apply to objects found before that date. It adds a class defined by importance rather than material: any object at least 200 years old, any part of which is metal, that "provides an exceptional insight into an aspect of national or regional history, archaeology or culture" because of its rarity as an example of its type found in the UK, the place or region where it was found, or its connection with a particular person or event. An object that does not meet the test alone can qualify as part of a group that does. Single coins can now be treasure if they meet the test.

The government's 2019 consultation had floated treating any find with a projected market value over £10,000 as treasure. The 2020 consultation response rejected the value test as impractical and opened the work that became the significance class. The £10,000 figure is not part of the law.

The 2023 order also took out finds under the Church of England's faculty jurisdiction and finds from cathedral precincts, which follow the Church's own rules. Wreck is excluded by the Act itself and goes to the Receiver of Wreck.

A finder who believes, or has reasonable grounds for believing, that an object is treasure must notify the coroner for the district within 14 days, counting from the day after the find or from the day the finder first realised it might be treasure (section 8). Failure to report without a reasonable excuse is a criminal offence. The Act sets the maximum at three months' imprisonment, a fine at level 5 on the standard scale, or both; gov.uk describes the fine as unlimited.

In practice finders in England and Wales report to their local Finds Liaison Officer (FLO) of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, who completes a Treasure Receipt and passes it to the coroner; in Wales the Treasure Registry at Amgueddfa Cymru also takes reports, and in Northern Ireland the Curator of Archaeology at National Museums NI. Anyone holding unreported treasure, dealers included, may also be committing theft.

The Code of Practice (3rd revision), which came into force on the same day as the 2023 order, sets out seven steps for a find a museum wants: the report, an expert's report for the coroner, a museum's decision to bid, the coroner's inquest into whether the find is treasure, a valuation, a recommendation from the Treasure Valuation Committee on the reward and its division, and finally payment and transfer. The Code puts a typical acquisition at 12 to 18 months. If no museum is interested the Crown disclaims the find and it goes back to the finder or landowner, usually without an inquest.

The Committee is an independent panel of unpaid experts from finders' groups, museums, archaeology and the trade. It aims for the likely auction hammer price, judged in the condition in which the object was found.

Under section 10 the reward can go to the finder, the occupier of the land and anyone with an interest in it, and the total cannot exceed the market value. The Code says the Committee normally recommends 50 per cent for the landowner and 50 per cent shared among the finders, taking account of any written agreement between them. Archaeologists and volunteers on a planned excavation get nothing; the landowner remains eligible.

Rewards can be cut or withheld. Grounds listed in the Code include late reporting, trespass, damaging the find or its context, handing in only part of it, misreporting the findspot and detecting on a protected site. A finder who stops digging and lets archaeologists lift the rest normally receives a reward for the whole find.

Most finds are not treasure. A single Roman brooch, a medieval buckle or a lone silver penny belongs to the landowner under ordinary property law (subject to any agreement with the finder), and nobody is legally obliged to report it in England or Wales. The Portable Antiquities Scheme exists to record such finds voluntarily. It began in 1997 with six pilot areas and now covers England and Wales through a network of Finds Liaison Officers. Its public database passed its one millionth record in October 2021.

Recording does not change who owns an object. Findspots are published at reduced precision so that sites are not targeted.

The Treasure Act applies in Northern Ireland, but there is an important difference on the ground. Under Article 41 of the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects (NI) Order 1995, any digging to search for archaeological objects needs a licence from the Department for Communities, and the Code notes that licences generally go only to professional archaeologists.

Scotland never had a Treasure Act. Its system rests on the Scots common-law principle of bona vacantia, ownerless goods, which belong to the Crown. The Treasure Trove Scotland Code of Practice (current edition published 25 March 2026) states that archaeological finds do not belong to the finder or the landowner: they are ownerless property which the Crown may choose to claim. Finders have a legal duty to report all archaeological finds, whatever the material: coins, pottery, worked stone, glass and textiles are all in scope, from prehistory to the modern period, though claimed finds are usually over 100 years old.

Reports go to the Treasure Trove Unit, a team of archaeologists and finds specialists at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, which works under the authority of the King's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer (KLTR), the officer who represents the Crown in ownerless-property matters. The Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel (SAFAP) then recommends to the KLTR which museum should receive a claimed find and what reward to pay.

The reward (also called an ex gratia award) is linked to market value, which sets its maximum, and it goes to the finder. Unlike in England, landowners in Scotland are not entitled to a share except by private agreement with the finder. Failing to report a find, or trying to sell it, can lead to a report to the police for theft.

The Republic of Ireland has some of the strictest rules in Europe. Under the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1987, s.2, using a detection device to search for archaeological objects anywhere in the State requires ministerial consent, and possessing one at a protected monument is an offence. The 1994 amendment vests ownership of every archaeological object found since 1994 with no known owner in the State, and a finder must report a find to the National Museum of Ireland within 96 hours.

Denmark's danefæ rule goes back to the provincial laws of the 13th century; the Jutland Law of 1241 gave the king silver and gold found in barrows or by the plough. Modern law keeps the principle: objects from the past found in Denmark with no provable owner are danefæ if made of valuable material or of special cultural-heritage value, belong to the state, and must be handed to the National Museum. The finder receives a reward based on the material value, the rarity of the find and the care taken over it (Moesgaard, International Numismatic Council).

Sweden's Cultural Environment Act (1988:950) treats ownerless finds from before 1850 as fornfynd (ancient finds). Finds connected to an ancient monument go to the state; other finds belong to the finder, who must offer them to the state for purchase if they contain gold, silver, copper or copper alloy, or if two or more objects appear to have been deposited together. Using a metal detector needs a permit from the county administrative board, and permits are not granted for searching for ancient finds except in public research; detecting is effectively closed to hobbyists.

Under §12 of Norway's Cultural Heritage Act, loose antiquities from before 1537 and coins from before 1650 belong to the state when no owner can be traced (for Sami objects the cut-off is 1917 or older). Finds must be reported promptly to the police or the heritage authority. The state may pay a finder's reward, shared equally between finder and landowner; for gold and silver it must be at least the metal value plus 10 per cent. Monuments and sites older than 1537 are automatically protected, and nobody may damage them.

The Civil Code (article 716) defines a trésor (treasure) as a hidden or buried thing that no one can prove to own, discovered by pure chance, and splits it equally between finder and landowner (summary). That split does not reward deliberate searching: under article L542-1 of the Code du patrimoine, nobody may use metal-detecting equipment to look for objects of prehistoric, historic, artistic or archaeological interest without prior administrative authorisation.

Federal civil law (§984 of the BGB) still contains the old "Hadrianic division": a treasure belongs half to the discoverer and half to the owner of the land. Heritage law belongs to the sixteen Länder, though, and each has adopted a Schatzregal that gives the Land ownership of significant archaeological finds; the details and rewards vary. Bavaria was the last to do so, with an amended monuments law in force from 1 July 2023 that also bans metal-detecting on registered archaeological sites.

The Dutch Heritage Act (Erfgoedwet) 2016 forbids anyone without a certificate from disturbing the ground to search for cultural heritage (article 5.1) and requires chance archaeological finds to be reported to the minister as soon as possible (article 5.10). For ownership, the Civil Code, book 5, article 13 gives a treasure in equal shares to the person who discovers it and the owner of the land. Protected archaeological monuments are off limits, and municipalities can add their own rules.

On federal and tribal land the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA) makes it a crime to excavate, remove or damage any archaeological resource without a permit; the definition covers material remains of past human life at least 100 years old. On private land the position depends on the state. Some states give treasure trove to the finder, others to the landowner, and trespassers generally lose any claim (summary of state law).