The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary programme run by the United Kingdom government to record the increasing numbers of small finds of archaeological interest found by members of the public.

The scheme funds the posts of Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs) at county councils or local museums to whom finders can report their objects.

FLOs maintain close links with local metal detecting societies and have contributed to a thaw in relationships between the detectorists and archaeologists who often previously disdained one another.

The PAS engages widely with the professional and amateur archaeological community through conferences, workshops and public activities.

The aim of this document was to complement the impending Treasure Act, address the issue of non-treasure archaeological finds and to propose solutions for dealing with these.

As a result, in December 1996, the DNH announced that funding would be provided for two years for a programme of six pilot schemes, starting in September 1997.

These six regions were chosen for the pilot schemes in consultation with the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), and were representative of the existing diversity in recording finds systems.

Some areas, such as Norfolk, had already established a tradition of recording finds and developed good relationships with finders and in particular among these, metal detectorists.

This delayed the progression of the application considerably and as an interim measure, while the evaluation was being undertaken, funding was ultimately secured from the DCMS and the HLF for the existing posts until September 2001.

A late medieval harness pendant found in Lincolnshire in October 2021 became the 1 millionth record logged on the scheme database.