<"Because it is a scheduled ancient monument no-one is allowed to dig there">
Then I'm missing something here
What exactly is it called then when an army of volunteers descend on a scheduled site with garden trowels and scrapers to 'put' soil from the ground into sieves and remove the artefacts?
Certainly, if you or I where to go to a scheduled site with a trowel and a sieve, there's a good chance we'd rightly be banged to rights for going "equipped to steal".
The mole-hills are a smoke screen and this just has to be sending out the wrong message. Why the subterfuge? why don't the archaeologists present go through the motions and organise it properly with the volunteers? They say 'no-one is allowed to dig there" but thats simply not true if they follow the correct procedures, surely?
I'm sorry, but this just seems wrong from too many angles and I reckon English Heritage will find it difficult to put the lid back on the can of worms they've opened.
...runs to put on fire proof safety gear before the flame war starts