reply
If this was true, they'd just ask to document it - like in England. Each county has a person responsible for documenting THEN RETURNING all relics.
Shambler, I'm afraid it's not that easy. You know, the answer you give is akin to this:
" what? history is not lost. Anyone can simply come to my house and see it on my mantle place. And gee, I'll even tell you how deep it was, etc..."
Do you really think, that in the current bureaucratic nightmares of govt. work-loads, that they want to introduce yet more departments, specialists, etc... who go around cataloging all your coins and horseshoes you find? The LAST thing they have, is more money to go around implementing more departments to cottle to such a small niche as us. It would simply never happen. They simply can't run around, nor police it, etc....
England is an entirely different thing, that just evolved that way, from the beginning. And I don't know if you're aware of it, but the type things they must "delare" (which are then studied and catologued by archies, bought from the finder, etc....) are only very rare and/or valuable things. So for example, it would only be something like caches, statues, etc.... So even if you found a gold coin over there, they would not have to "turn it in", etc... But heck, just try for a minute doing that over here, and going out and finding bullets, coins, etc... at Shiloh. Even though it's "just one bullet" or "just one buckle", to us in the USA (with relatively little history) something 100 or 200 yrs. old is OLD to us (and we have entire historical monuments built around such things that might only be 200 yr. old!). But over in England, heck, 300 to 500 yr old coins are oft-times just thrown in the junk jar. And even in England, their system STILL does not allow you to hunt in their "scheduled" sites.
So, to try to say the England thing would work here (as some sort of proof that they really aren't concerned about archaeological importance) simply doesn't logically follow.