Sometime in the middle of the 15th century, a well-to-do merchant from London buried more than 6,700 gold and silver coins on a sloping, hillside in Surrey. He was fleeing the War of the Ro-ses and planned to return during better times. But he never did. The coins lay undisturbed until one September evening in 1990, when local resident Roger Mintey chanced upon them with a metal de-tector, a device used to determine the presence of metals. Mintey's find much of.which now sits in the British Museum-earned him roughly $350,000, enough to quit his job with a small manu- facturer and spend more time pursuing lost treasure.

　　But digging up the past is controversial in Britain. In many European countries, metal detecto- fists, or people using metal detectors, face tough regulations. In the U. K., however, officials in- troduced a scheme in 1997 encouraging hobbyists to report their discoveries (except for those fall- ing under the definition of treasure, like Mintey's find, which they are required to report)--but al- lowing them to keep what they find, or receive a reward. Last year, a hidden store was uncovered

　　in a field outside Birmingham. It consists of more than 1,500 gold and silver objects from the sev- enth century and was valued at more than $4.5 million. While local museums hurry to raise enough money to keep the find off the open market, it sits in limbo, owned by the Crown but fa- cing claims by the landowner and the metal detectorist who found it.

　　The find marks the latest battleground in the increasingly heated conflict between the country's 10,000-20,000 metal detectorists and the museum workers determined to protect its precious old objects. Supporters say the scheme stems the loss of valuable information about precious old ob-jects, while opponents argue that metal detectorists don't report everything.

　　The debate centers on the larger question of who owns the past. "There's been a slow move over the centuries that precious old things belong to us all," says Professor Christopher Chippindale of Cambridge University. But in Britain at least, the temptation of buried treasure could change all that.