Recording a find with the state or the PAS

1. In the United States, find your state's site file. Every State Historic Preservation Office or archaeological survey keeps one, indexed by the Smithsonian trinomial — 23SL42 is the 42nd recorded site in St. Louis County, Missouri.

2. Report the site, keep the artifacts. A landowner or collector can record a site and receive its number without surrendering finds; the location is confidential by law in most states. Stratum keeps the site name and number on the device only and prints "on file with dealer" on certificates.

3. In England and Wales, take the object and the find-spot (a grid reference and the landowner's permission) to the Finds Liaison Officer at your museum. The Portable Antiquities Scheme record — a reference like WMID-1A2B3C, photographs and a description — goes on the public database at parish precision.

4. Report Treasure within 14 days. Precious-metal objects over 300 years old, prehistoric base-metal assemblages, coin hoards and, since 2023, significant metal objects over 200 years old go to the coroner; the FLO handles it. In Scotland all finds go to the Treasure Trove Unit.

5. On the record, set Recorded with to the body and reference, attach the acknowledgment or PAS page as a document, and set the land class and find kind truthfully. Those three fields are what the compliance gate reads.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "Recording a find with the state or the PAS" (How-to). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20. https://stratum.black/study/how-to/how-to-record-a-find. Accessed 2026-09-21.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-how-to-record-a-find,
  title        = {Recording a find with the state or the PAS},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/how-to/how-to-record-a-find}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {How-to article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-21.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.