On state park land
Allowed in some places
On coastal and inland sandy beaches you need no permission at all. Anywhere else on state conservation land you need a staff member's permission, and only to look for lost property.
This state also reaches city and county land — see below
1. The rule, in full
Massachusetts – 302 CMR 12.04(12), and see the political-subdivision file
Massachusetts has two instruments and they point in opposite directions. Both belong on the state page, labelled by the land each governs.
1. DCR property – 302 CMR 12.04(12), and it is permissive
Operative text, read from the published 302 CMR 12.00 PDF at mass.gov, parsed locally:
"(12) With the exception of coastal and inland sandy beaches, no person may use or offer for use metal detectors, except with permission from DCR personnel, for the purposes of locating lost personal property."
Scope, 302 CMR 12.01(1) Purpose:
"302 CMR 12.00 governs the conduct of activities on property of the Commonwealth under the care, custody, and control of the Department of Conservation and Recreation."
Determination for this rule: DCR property only. Does NOT reach municipal parks.
Read carefully, it grants two things. Coastal and inland sandy beaches are carved out entirely – no permission needed. Everywhere else on DCR land, permission from DCR personnel is needed and the stated purpose is "locating lost personal property", which does not cover relic hunting. Status: allowed_in_some_areas, with the beach carve-out quoted, because that is the usable part.
The section is 12.04, "Rules of Conduct on DCR Properties – Generally", and the provision is item (12) within it. Secondary sources cite "302 CMR 12.04" loosely or give no number; the full cite is 302 CMR 12.04(12).
2. All public land including municipal – M.G.L. c. 9, 27C
This is the one that matters, and its entry is in STATE-LAND-political-subdivision.md. In short: a State Archeologist permit is required before conducting "field investigation activities" on any land owned or controlled by the Commonwealth, its agencies or its political subdivisions, and 950 CMR 70.04 defines that term to include "the entrance onto a site with that intent". Massachusetts is the seventh state to reach municipal land and the first to reach the activity rather than the find.
Do not merge the two. A reader can be inside the DCR beach carve-out and still inside the Antiquities Act, because the two instruments govern different things – one is about where a detector may be switched on, the other is about what the searcher is looking for. The Massachusetts page has to carry both, and the shared "you may sweep, you may not take" treatment does not fit this state without a qualifier.
Sources: mass.gov published 302 CMR 12.00 PDF, parsed locally; malegislature.gov M.G.L. c. 9, 27C; mass.gov published 950 CMR 70.00 PDF, parsed locally. Checked 19 Sep 2026.
Fetch note worth keeping. mass.gov returns HTTP 403 to a plain fetch and to a fetch carrying only a browser User-Agent, and ScraperAPI returned a corrupted PDF that pypdf could not enumerate – a failure that looks exactly like "no such provision" and cost one credit to learn. It serves the file correctly to a request carrying the full browser header set (Accept, Accept-Language, Accept-Encoding with decompression, and the Sec-Fetch-* headers). That is a cheaper first move than the API for any state site that 403s.
2. Where it reaches city and county land
Massachusetts – M.G.L. c. 9, 26 to 27C + 950 CMR 70.00 (Antiquities Act)
Read at source: the statute at malegislature.gov (the General Court's own site), the regulation at mass.gov as the published 950 CMR 70.00 PDF, parsed locally.
THIS IS THE FIRST STATE IN THE PROJECT THAT REACHES THE ACTIVITY. Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia all reach the find, the site or a professional licensing category. Massachusetts reaches going onto the land with the intent.
Operative text, M.G.L. c. 9, 27C:
"No person, corporation, agency or authority of the commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions shall conduct field investigation activities on any land owned or controlled by the commonwealth, its agencies or political subdivisions or on any historic or archeological landmarks or on any lands restricted by section thirty-one of chapter one hundred and eighty-four of the General Laws without first securing a permit from the state archeologist."
Scope: reaches municipal land, twice over. 950 CMR 70.03(1) repeats the statute and then says it again in plainer words:
"Any individual, corporation, institution, school, agency, or other entity who plans to conduct Destructive Archeological Field Investigations must secure a permit from the State Archeologist if the field investigations will be located on state, county or municipal property; or on lands which are controlled by state, county or municipal easements; or on lands which are being evaluated by state, county or municipal authorities as a part of proposed land modification projects; … or on any other lands owned or controlled by the Commonwealth, its agencies or political subdivisions."
The definition is what makes this different. 950 CMR 70.04:
"Field Investigation means the study of traces of human culture or other remains of any land or water site by means of surveying, digging, sampling, excavating or removing surface or subsurface objects, or the entrance onto a site with that intent."
Read plainly: walking into a municipal park intending to dig up traces of human culture is itself the regulated act. Nothing has to be found, and nothing has to be damaged.
Penalties, 950 CMR 70.30:
"(1) Any person … who shall conduct field investigations on land owned or controlled by the Commonwealth, its agencies, or any political subdivisions thereof … without first obtaining a permit … shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500 or by imprisonment for not more than six months." "(2) Any person … who shall appropriate, deface, destroy or otherwise alter any site, specimen or landmark except in the course of activities authorized under permit … All specimens, objects and materials collected or excavated in violation of 950 CMR 70.30 shall be forfeited to the Commonwealth."
And 950 CMR 70.03(2):
"All specimens collected through field investigation activities conducted under permit as provided in 950 CMR 70.00 shall be the property of the Commonwealth."
What limits it, and this is the part the page must get right. The defined term is the study of "traces of human culture or other remains". Sweeping a town beach for dropped modern coins and jewellery is not the study of traces of human culture, and reading the rule as banning that would be the Georgia error run forward. Relic hunting on municipal ground is squarely inside the definition. The line is the searcher's object, exactly as New Mexico's line is the word "knowingly".
Two open questions, both recorded rather than resolved.
- Does a non-destructive sweep need a permit? Secondary sources say
Non-Destructive field investigations do not require a permit and need only written notice to the State Archeologist. That carve-out is not in 950 CMR 70.00 as published. 70.20 is titled "Exceptions" and is entirely about human skeletal remains. The regulation does distinguish Destructive from Non-Destructive in the 70.04 definition, and lists "magnetometer studies … and other remote sensing studies" as Non-Destructive methods – but the permit requirement in 70.03(1) sentence one is not limited to Destructive investigations, and only sentence two is. Whether a detector sweep with no digging needs a permit turns on reading those two sentences together. That is a question for MHC, not for us to resolve on the page. Where the notice requirement comes from has not been established from a primary source.
- A defect in the statute itself. M.G.L. c. 9, 27 requires a permit for
"a field investigation, as defined in section twenty-six A". Section 26A as it currently stands at malegislature.gov contains no definition of the term – it is a list of the state archeologist's duties. Section 26 does not define it either. The only definition in force is the regulatory one at 950 CMR 70.04. This is the Utah shape again: a cross-reference pointing at a definition that is not where the statute says it is. Quote 950 CMR 70.04 on the page, cite 27C for the prohibition, and do not repeat the 26A cross-reference as though it worked.
Directory entry should read: in Massachusetts a permit from the State Archeologist is required before conducting field investigation activities – defined as studying traces of human culture by surveying, digging or removing objects, or entering a site intending to – on any land owned or controlled by the Commonwealth or by a city or town. It is a misdemeanour without one, and anything collected is forfeited. It should NOT read that metal detecting is banned in Massachusetts city parks; it should say that searching municipal ground for historic material is permit-controlled and that looking for modern lost property is a different thing.
Separately and not to be merged: 302 CMR 12.04(12) governs DCR property only and is comparatively permissive – detecting is allowed on coastal and inland sandy beaches, and elsewhere on DCR land with DCR permission for recovering lost personal property. A reader can be inside the DCR allowance and still inside the Antiquities Act. Both go on the Massachusetts page, labelled by which land each one governs.
Sources: malegislature.gov, M.G.L. c. 9, 26, 26A, 27 and 27C; mass.gov published 950 CMR 70.00 PDF, parsed locally; mass.gov published 302 CMR 12.00 PDF, parsed locally. Checked 19 Sep 2026.
3. Cities in Massachusetts that publish a rule
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.
4. County rules
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.
5. Cities checked — no published rule
Awaiting review. None of the city or county rows publishes until its status is set and its quotation chosen by hand.