PAS and Finds in Eastern England

© David Gill, 2021

I have been doing some work on the results of the RSA Heritage Index (2020) with a focus, in part, on eastern England. The Index includes a section on 'reported archaeological finds' drawn from the PAS dataset. It becomes immediately obvious that considerably more finds are being reported for Norfolk and Suffolk than for the four other counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire. (Looking outside the region, West Sussex and East Sussex have a combined total of 27,000 finds; and the whole of Wales just over 63,000 finds.) 

What does this mean?

The recorders for Norfolk and Suffolk are to be praised for their recording of over 180,000 finds. The other four counties barely make 64,000 together. 

Does this mean that more finds are made and reported in Norfolk and Suffolk?

Does this mean that finds are under-reported (and therefore not recorded) in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire?

Is the implication that there is more activity in East Anglia than other parts of the region?

How does such information distort the way that these largely de-contextualised finds are used for research projects?