I put little stock into what some of those compendium lists have compiled. Some of it (heck, for most all except Britian) sounds downright dire. If not explicit "no's". Filled with all sorts of scary verbiage on cultural heritage blah blah.
The reason I put little stock into the lists, is the way they were compiled years or decades ago. It was simple: They just emailed or dialed up a lawyer or bureaucrat pencil pusher there, and asked. What could be more logical than that, eh ? Who better to ask, then the entity themselves, eh ? But here's where it gets funky :
The old "no one cared till you asked" psychology can occur on a NATIONWIDE scale, just like it can occur on a city scale. You know the drill: No one ever cared or had a problem before. But then one day, someone shows up at city hall , asking questions, and gets a "no". So the old-timers are left scratching their heads saying "since when ?". SO TOO DOES IT HAPPEN on large country scale too. Someone in an archie's office couches shipwreck salvor laws, or cultural heritage laws (which never applied to anything except sensitive obvious monuments before that), and presto: You get the pressing safe answer to a silly question.
Then these dire sounding "no's" make it on to the compendiums. Then links lead to links. And before long, no one can ever put it to rest. It's just taken as gospel law. Perhaps the language was never meant to apply to private land (farmer's fields with permission).
It would be no different than if someone were getting ready to vacation in the USA and inquired ahead. He might find a purist archie to cite ARPA, or morph Mel Fisher legal hassles, and cite all kinds of scary language.
I would read between the lines. I would go help that farmer find the lost ring his wife just lost. Or go find the ring your wife lost on the beach last night. But that's just me. Of course avoid archie conventions and obvious historic monument type spots.
