Collecting Ethics and the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Gao, Jan 19, 2018.

  1. Gao

    Gao Member

    So years ago, a coin dealer put up some coins from the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus. I hadn't heard of it at the time, but the coins were much nicer than what you usually expect of Gallienus, and I loved the idea of being able to own a coin from a known hoard. And luckily, the analysis of the hoard is on Numiswiki here So I immediately got to reading, but I found something I didn't expect:

    That confused me. I thought part of the point of identifying coins as being from a hoard was to establish provenance back to its find site and to confirm that these came from a real dig, not looting. But why would the country of origin mysteriously go missing? Like I could see collectors who bout a coin or two not keeping track and the provenance getting lost if a coin was inherited or something, but a whole hoard that was preserved together until the time that was written? At the time, I backed off the coins from that hoard, but otherwise tried not to think about it too much. It was really uncomfortable that something that looked so shady was just right there on a dealer's site, and no one in the collecting community seemed to act like anything strange was going on. I'd occasionally think back on it and wonder if it was as bad as it looked or if I was just over-reacting. I've decided to look into it.

    So the passage about this hoard is from the catalog for an auction of a large chunk of this hoard that took place in 1992. Unfortunately, that's the only indication we have for dating the find. Still, it does tell us that if we're questioning legality, we need to make sure we're not accidentally looking at laws from after then. The other big piece of information is this:

    A Turkish origin still seems likely enough that it's worth considering, so let's take a look at the antiquities laws of all three countries.

    It's pretty easy to find out what's legal in Syria. Unesco's site has an official English translation of the Antiquities Law of 1963. The most relevant sections are article 3, which defines coins as movable antiquities, article 4, which declares that all movable antiquities as property of the state, and 30-32 which state that if the state doesn't want the movable antiquities, they can be sold after a Presidential Decree and that antiquities can be kept by private individuals if they are registered with the government. And since last time I brought up foreign law, someone here told me that I should be careful as a layman reading a law through translation, there's a mention of Syria requiring authorization for the export of antiquities on page 14/22 in this article by someone who specializes in cultural heritage legislation.

    So if this hoard was legally exported from Syria, there would be explicit permission given to this. It would make no sense for a dealer to not preserve this if they were keeping the hoard together, since it could only add to the value and make it less of a hassle to bring across international boarders. Given the requirement for registration of antiquities, there would also be some official record of this hoard. The fact that someone who bought such a large chunk of this hoard has no idea where it came from tells us that if this hoard originated in Syria at any point after 1963, it was exported illegally.

    So Turkey is the next easiest, since I found an article from a Turkish law professor that discusses antiquities laws in Turkey since the 19th century. I really think any ancient coin or antiquities collector should read this one, but the short version is that export of antiquities from Ottoman territory was forbidden in 1869, all antiquities were declared state property in 1906, and at least that latter decree was still law after the modern Turkish state emerged. Yes, that's been a thing for that long, and no, I've never heard any coin collector or dealer mention this seemingly very important piece of information. So I checked UNESCO's database again, and they have the text of 1983's Law on the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Property, in which article 32 unambiguously states that cultural property, which the law earlier specifically states include ancient coins, are not allowed out of the country except on approved loan. So this can't have legally come out of Turkey after that date. I can't tell if there was as complete a ban on any exporting before (did the 1869 decree still have any effect?), but let's assume there wasn't and the government sometimes allowed exportation of its own property. It was still government property, and that means they'd give you documentation if you were claiming it legally. A dealer would only be working against his own interest by not preserving such documentation. If this hoard came from Turkey, unless it was dug up and exported out of the country before 1869 and somehow kept together as a hoard for over a century, then it was exported illegally.

    Last we have Lebanon. While there are 1988 and 1990 ministerial decisions that forbid all exports of antiquities, it's hardly implausible that this hoard would have left the country before then, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that that's the case. UNESCO has a copy of the 1933 antiquities law, but only in French or Arabic, neither of which I can read (if any Francophones are interested, here it is). However, this article on antiquities trafficking in the Arab world explains some of it:

    So if this hoard came from Lebanon, they would have needed to filled out an application that left a record, and they would have gotten paperwork. If this hoard originated in Lebanon after 1933, then it was exported illegally.

    So yeah, it looks like this hoard was probably stolen from its home country. But I can think of some possible objections to and comments on my conclusion, so let's explore those.

    Maybe paperwork just got lost along the way.
    You can get paperwork replaced. And given how that makes the transport of a hoard like this much easier and adds value to the hoard, I can't see someone who had access not trying to replace it.

    Maybe the hoard was dug up many decades before it was sold.
    If someone (or a series of people) cared enough about keeping the hoard relatively whole that they kept it that way for decades, wouldn't they be exactly the sort of person who'd want to keep track of where it was found? Or at least wouldn't they be a clear part of the history of the object they clearly loved so much? Like why isn't there a record like "the hoard first turns up in the hands of Joe Schmo, a British schoolteacher who moved to the Ottoman Empire to teach English in 1853?" And as far as I can tell, most hoards end up getting broken up by dealers, so it seems implausible that this didn't happen over the course of at least 30 years. So unless someone has examples of hoards staying together this long without being part of a museum collection or something (as those would leave records), this seems very unlikely.

    Maybe someone was trying to hide their source so that the competition couldn't jump on it.
    I could see trying to hide an individual seller, but telling a customer that a coin was found in Syria doesn't tell them which dealer in Aleppo gives you the good deals that your business relies on. Why wouldn't they preserve the rest of their information somehow?

    What if it was actually found somewhere else?
    While the evidence points to the locations we looked at, it is of course possible that someone brought their wealth to another part of the empire, buried it, and died before they could add any coins that would indicate the new location. But another explanation being possible doesn't erase the fact that the countries I discussed are much, much more likely. Unless someone provides evidence pointing to another location, I see little reason to treat one as a serious possibility.

    But this was sold by reputable, ethical dealers.
    Yes, and I expect plenty of other reputable dealers to resell coins from this hoard in the future. In my experience, when it comes to ancient coin collecting, "reputable" and "ethical" mean something along the lines of "he's really good about catching fakes and offers a lifetime guarantee of authenticity." Few collectors seem to care enough about cultural property issues to even comment on which dealers handle those well, so it's rarely a factor. Have you heard about those dealers making careful research of the provenance of their coins to make sure they were exported from their home countries legally? Have they talked about the importance of cultural property laws and preserving archaeological sites? Have they returned coins that were found to be smuggled? Remember that reputation should be judged by ones actions, not the other way around.

    But the coins are real, so who cares?
    Fake coins usually only harm those who buy them, and that harm is usually just lost money. Looted coins damage archaeological sites, rob both the coins and the sites of important context, and can fund organized crime. Like while the extent of it has often been exaggerated, ISIS does make money by smuggling antiquities (though of course that particular group didn't profit from this particular hoard). It's actually kind of odd that fakes are considered the bigger issue.

    But the laws in those countries are awful and incredibly restrictive.
    Oh, definitely. I support laws like those in England, which make ethical collecting possible and work with the fact that you're not going to stop treasure hunters instead of blanket bans that don't actually stop anyone. But that doesn't make the coins not stolen, and it doesn't erase any of the other issues with the illicit coin trade.

    In addition, these laws exist because people keep looting and ruining archaeological sites. Putting money into the hands of those looters is only going to perpetuate the system the laws are fighting against and justify those laws, not encourage something more reasonable.

    But collectors take better care of them. It's better than sitting in a museum.
    If I broke into your house, stole your coin collection, and I justified it by demonstrating that I had better methods of conservation,storage, and sharing information about them with the world, I'm pretty sure you'd still consider it theft and demand your coins back.

    And in case anyone suggests it, yes, Syria isn't a good place for antiquities right now. Even if I were telling you to find where all your coins came from and send them back to their origin countries (and I'm not), I'd tell you to hold off on the Syrian ones for a while. But whenever this hoard was dug up, they had no way of knowing what would happen to the country decades later, so this is not a good justification for theft.

    But this hoard was dug up so long ago. Why does it matter now?
    Most illicit coins are going to go through several hands before they make it to a collector. By supporting any part of it, you're supporting the whole system as well as showing that illicit coins will hold their value by continuing to buy them after the fact. I'm sure some buyers of newer illicit coins would think twice if they saw that people who bought coins like those in this hoard were having trouble getting even half their money back when they sold them.

    Besides, stolen goods + time = old goods that are still stolen. I mean image that your current collection was stolen. How long would it take before you'd be OK with people openly selling these coins to each other while being open that the coins probably came from you?

    Even you said that are technically ways that this could be legal. You haven't definitely proven them to be illicit goods.
    It's also technically possible that your entire life has been a VR simulation and that you're actually a brain in a vat. Short of a confession, video evidence, or something like that, it's impossible to definitely 100% prove that a coin was stolen from a certain place. But we can still look at the evidence to determine how likely it is that a given coin or set of coins came through illicit means. And in this case, it's pretty clear that any legal export is very unlikely, so we have to act like these coins are probably stolen.

    But so many coins on the market have no provenance. How is this hoard different?
    Honestly? Probably just the fact that the auction catalog gave us the evidence we needed to confirm that these aren't on the up and up. Countless antiquities are smuggled from these and more countries, but collectors mostly seem to have adopted what's basically a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the origins of ancient coins, or at least the cheaper ones. I have definitely been guilty of this. But we need to come to terms with the fact that there have probably been hundreds if not thousands of hoards that had origins just as shady as the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus, but most dealers don't take the weirdly honest tactic of directly acknowledging problematic origins (and for all my problems with selling this, I do have to give props to Alex G. Malloy for not hiding this, having the hoard properly studied, and giving us at least the small bit of provenance of "it's from this specific hoard," which is more than I can say for most of the coins I've bought).


    So all of this wasn't really about condemning a specific dealer or people who bought the coins from this hoard. I'd expect most dealers to sell these coins as if nothing's wrong. The dealer I first saw selling coins from this hoard may very well have not thought to check if there could be issues with coins already auctioned by another respected dealer over a decade earlier. And I'm sure that if you're someone who bought a coin from this hoard, you just thought you were buying a cool coin with an interesting history from a trusted guy. You didn't think there was a reason to think more about it or look more into it. While I myself didn't buy from this particular hoard, that exactly describes my experience with buying a lot of my coins. I'm just as guilty of perpetuating this sort of thing.

    I'm not asking anyone to drop their collection off at the nearest Turkish embassy or something, but we need to improve. We need to start questioning the provenance of all the coins we buy, including crusty, cheap Constantines (and remember that you can literally just ask a dealer on V-Coins, Ebay, or Forvm if they have more information than in the listing, as they very well might). We should be thinking very carefully about where our coins come from and what buying a particular coin means. We should hold dealers accountable to illicit antiquities the same way that we hold them accountable for fakes. I believe we can make this hobby less harmful without abandoning it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
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  3. Nicholas Molinari

    Nicholas Molinari Well-Known Member

    You are way overestimating the value of keeping paperwork. I have many coins imported legally from Italy (and elsewhere) that basically have a registration number stamped on the receipt or a photocopy with blurry images and an official signature. I keep them now because everyone is paranoid but 10 years ago I would have tossed them out. Just because there isn't a recorded find spot doesn't mean the coins were exported illegally. And until fairly recently people weren't concerned with keeping paper trails.
     
  4. Nicholas Molinari

    Nicholas Molinari Well-Known Member

    I just bought this artifact the other day. Excavated in the early 1950s. I got it from the official archaeologist's own son. Guess what? He didn't have the paperwork! And I don't expect my kids to have all of my "paperwork" for my perfectly legal coins.

    IMG_4469.PNG
     
  5. greekandromancoins

    greekandromancoins Well-Known Member

    I agree with Nick. Almost all coins in the market (hundreds of thousands or more?) currently fall into this category of unknown provenance. Those coins came from hoards somewhere. Whether this century, last, or a few hundred years ago, almost all coins were dug up somewhere including coins in museums and famous collections. Check the BM catalogue and see if you can trace their coins back to an ethical source! If you collect ancient coins and take a strict view about their original provenance then there are not really many coins on the market to suit those needs. I certainly have not come across many. It is the wrong hobby for that where freedom of ownership is central to its enjoyment.
     
  6. 4to2centBC

    4to2centBC Well-Known Member

    You obviously spent a lot of time putting thought into the subject. I read most of it, and I have had many of those same debates.

    Up until recently (Jan 20, 2017) I was also concerned about such things. Now they seem quaint.

    You won't stop looting with laws or internet sleuthing. You won't stop the sale of those items either. You may make a small dent and feel proud, but you will do little else. Looting is a symptom of poverty, ignorance, and greed. Good luck.

    btw Dropping bombs all over a region destroys a whole lot of archeological history. I have decided that looting is a red herring. Our energies should be focused on stopping wars. The rest will follow.


    Anyhow, nice read.
     
  7. Valentinian

    Valentinian Well-Known Member

    That is a very nicely argued post. However, almost every paragraph needs a reality check.

    Ancient coins have value. If local governments won't pay some fraction of their value for them, they will make it to the black market and someone will buy them.

    Most hoards are not found on pre-existing archaeological sites. In England, where they are recorded, you can easily see this from the publications entitled "Coin Hoards from Roman Britain."

    Hoards that make it to the trade constitute far more publications than hoards from pre-existing archaeological digs. (Archaeologists have a deservedly bad reputation about publishing, and especially about coins.)

    Some may tell you there is information lost when we don't know precisely where a hoard was dug up. That sounds significant. However, I invite you to reflect on what difference that could possibly make. It may be fun to know it came from Field A instead of Field B, but that has no real bearing on anything. "Provenance" is much overrated. [EDIT: Except as misguided laws may require it.]

    "Stolen" is a strong word which evokes human ownership being violated and adds power and urgency to the argument. It makes the problem look bad. However, is that the proper word? If a coin is found in the ground, is it stolen? From whom?

    Countries cause this problem with their foolish and misguided laws. It is not collectors who cause the problem. There are collectors in England and good laws and no significant problem. If you really want provenance, have countries adopt the English system

    If the point is to get knowledge, collectors contribute more to knowledge about ancient coins than archaeologists do.

    Collecting gets people intensely interested in antiquity. Collectors funded and conducted almost all early archaeology.

    If, somehow magically, many collectors insisted on coins being documented and laws of places like Turkey and Lebanon followed and, again magically, someone actually followed them, the coins would be confiscated by the government, never to be seen again. Many are sold off by corrupt officials. (Ask yourself why no one from the West has been allowed to the the famous Reka-Devnia hoard in decades.)

    This post is about reality.

    Suppose all Syrian ancient coins were back in Syria. What claim does Syria have to them? Cultural affinity? No. Direct ancestry? Not really. Religion? No. They will take care of them well? No. They will publish them for the knowledge about antiquity they can add? No. A few westernized Syrians do care and would love to work with them to western academic standards, but my whole post is a reality check. Get real!

    Here is a summary of laws about coins in many countries "It's ours!"

    The subtext is, "You found them and we have no intention of doing anything with the coins beyond putting them in some basement, but they belong to us (because we are greedy and they have value)." Long ago (twenty years?) I spoke to a Byzantine coin specialist who said he had heard there were twenty tons of Byzantine bronzes in the basement in Istanbul, but it could not be confirmed because no one from the west was allowed to see them. I wish he were wrong about this.

    I have participated in many published academic studies of ancient coins. They rely on images. Many studies do not even require actually seeing the coins--their images are enough. One used many images from eBay! Think about it. Where do images of coins come from? Dealers and other people selling coins have created many times as many images as other sources. Without collectors buying coins and dealers selling them, scholarship would be greatly hampered.

    I spoke with an important academic (who I will not name) who studies ancient coinage from the Indian subcontinent. When he goes there, he only visits private collectors. Why? Because museum collections in India (have stupid rules which) only allow you to request to see at most six coins a day! (I am not making this up!)

    I could go on and one, but this is response enough. When you read those arguments, be careful to think about what they really means when reality is taken into account.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
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  8. panzerman

    panzerman Well-Known Member

    I used to have a hobby (collecting butterflies/moths/beetles) it was great fun. However govt. interference ruined it. All of a sudden , Countries of origin banned collecting/ CITES rules/ import regulations:inpain:
    However, extinctions are not caused by collecting, but rather cutting down forests (Brazil) good example, hence destroying the food plants.
    With coins, when that hoard of Koson AV staters were found in Romania, most ended up in private coin collections like mine. I say great, we collectors keep much better care of these rare coins then museums. Same for the small hoard of mint state, Seljuks of Rum AV Dinars from Konya Mint, the Akola hoard of mint state Shah Jahan I AV Mohurs from Surat Mint. Private collectors do a first rate job of preserving coins.
     
  9. Ed Snible

    Ed Snible Well-Known Member

    Gao, you and I have similar goals, but disagree on the methods that will get us there.

    If we hold everyone to a difficult standard, such as only collecting coins with pre-1970 (or pre-1869!) provenances, few will be able to collect. Sort of like a 45 MPH highway. Such a policy incentivizes the manufacture of false documentation and purposely losing information such as provenance to a 1990s hoard.

    You are probably right about the letter of the law. You make an analogy to goods stolen from a house. A better analogy might be stealing an apple off a tree. And I agree that we shouldn’t do that! The problem is how to tell the difference. The diamond people have worked out a protocol. The ivory people also worked out a protocol but theirs isn’t working.

    Some countries are not tolerant of their ethnic and religious minorities. National governments declare themselves the owner of everything in the ground. Think about what you would do if you were an ethnic minority and found a coin hoard. Would you, Gao, prefer to turn it over without reward to the national government or sell it to smugglers connected with your group’s independence movement? Why?

    I don’t need to remind you that the Turkish speaking people arrived in Turkey in the 11th century and the Greek speaking descendants of the people who minted the coins left Turkey in the 1920s. Solve the ethical equation for what an American should do with a coin that was possibly smuggled out of Turkey or Syria during the 20th century.

    I suggest source countries change the law so that coins found on private lands are partly owned by the land owner. Antiquities on public lands could be owned by the school board of the region they are found rather than by the central government. I realize it is not my place to demand other countries change their policies — but this is a “collective action problem” and thus requires collective action.

    It is good to ask for documentation and preserve it when it is provided. As collectors the best we can to study and publish coins as Alex Malloy and Dr. David W. Sorenson did with this hoard.
     
  10. Severus Alexander

    Severus Alexander find me at NumisForums

    @Gao, I appreciate your well written and thoughtful post. But I think the responses above add up to a fully convincing refutation of your position. In particular, they show that your argument here is particularly vulnerable:

    These laws will never work, they are morally wrong, and supporting them as you do here, and as the archaeological community is wont to do, and as the U.S. government has done in the past, is the only thing that will perpetuate them.

    Instead, I think I'll try to find a coin from the Antioch hoard to buy. ;)
     
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  11. Curtisimo

    Curtisimo the Great(ish)

    Guilty until proven innocent???

    The problem with this is that it attempts to hold finds from 30+ years ago to a very recent standard of proof. No one doing business back then could have foreseen the need to religiously retain export documents once the coin was out of the source country any more than I thought to retain the paperwork for the warranty on my computer.

    Assuming that these coins were stolen just because we don't know where they were found is highly illogical and seems more like an attempt to back into a preconceived conclusion. The fact is that we know so little about the circumstances of this hoard find that trying to make radical pronouncements on its legality is a pointless exercise.

    Plus, it is absolutely just as plausible that the coins where stored for many years (maybe decades) and changed hands several times during that period before being offered up at auction. In fact, since only about half the hoard was offered in 1992 it seems fairly likely that multiple changes of ownership occurred. The plausible reasons why this might be the case are practically limitless. Check the history of any of the potential source countries you mention and it is not difficult to find an event that could lead to objects being stored away for safety or otherwise and forgotten for decades.

    That is not just hypothetical either, I actually own an example from a hoard that was dug up in 1887 but was not brought to auction until 2017. The entire hoard spent more than a century in storage (not a museum!) and the only reason that any information on it was retained at all was the very sensible attitude of the British government to collectors both then and now.
    Julian_AR_Siliqua_AD_360-361_CSH.jpg
    Roman Empire
    Julian II, AD 360-363
    AR Siliqua, Lugdunum mint, struck ca. AD 360-361
    Wt.: 2.23 g
    Dia.: 18 mm
    Obv.: FL CL IVLIA NVS P P AVG, pearl-diademed, draped, and cuirassed bust right
    Rev.: VICTORIA DD NN AVG, Victory advancing left, holding wreath and palm frond
    Ref.: LVG. RIC VIII 212; Lyon 259; RSC 58†c, IRBCH 1424


    False... the vast majority of coins are not found on archaeological sites and it is not hard to see why. People who are trying to hide their valuables from other people are not going to be very likely to bury their treasure right in the middle of the forum now are they? My above coin was found buried in a field far removed from any ancient settlements or even roads as far as my research has been able to tell. Any amount of study of documented hoards will show that coins are most often not found in the context of an archaeological site.

    I think it is safe to say that there is no such thing as an ancient coin collector that does not want to know exactly where his/her coin has been from the day it was minted to the day it was bought.

    The problem does not lie with the collector! The problem lies with the absolutely unattainable goal of establishing a definitive provenance on the vast majority of coins to the era before photography was easy and widely available enough to make the documentation of cheap coins economical and practically feasible.

    Take my avatar coin for example.
    2-R01-004_RR_Denarius_211_BC.jpg
    This coin has the vintage "cabinet tone" and shows every sign of being in someones mahogany cabinet for decades before it came to me. I have spent countless hours searching through old catalogs for early provenance to this piece but to no avail. Most likely, the circulation wear made this example "not good enough" to warrant a photograph in the 20th century auctions it was most likely sold in at one point or the other.

    So when a coin like the above didn't make the cut for expensive early photographs to establish provenance how can you possible expect coins like the below to stand a chance?
    4-R22-001.jpg
    Let's get real. Ancient coins were commodities for trade (actually made to leave their source country/city). Ancient coins are not the Mona Lisa or sculptures that were made to stay in their home country and should not be treated the same or held to the same standards for proof of provenance.

    I do not believe that this hobby has been "harmful" to the study of human history one bit. In fact I vehemently contend that this hobby has done as much for the study of our collective cultural heritage as any other branch of academia.

    I recently read a book called "The History of Persia" and it is amazing how much the author leaned on source information from books on numismatics that were written largely to appeal to collectors! In places where the written record is less complete than in the classical west, coins are one of the best sources of information that is left to us. Look at any of the numismatic research being done today and you will find that information from major auctions are one of the biggest sources that are used.

    "Ethics" will mean different things to different people but at the end of the day it's about doing what you think is right as an individual. I research and study my coins. I am a good custodian of them and will pass them on in at least as good of shape as I found them. I can honestly say I feel good about my part in this hobby. If someone feels differently about the hobby or their part in it then perhaps it is not a good hobby for that person to pursue.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2018
  12. Gao

    Gao Member

    Here's a good article by an ancient coin collector about the kinds of issues I brought up. He has a section regarding this that I'm just going to paste here:

    It is often asserted that ‘collectible’ coins sold on the market come from hoards found by metal detectorists in the middle of fields away from any sort of proper historical or archaeological site (for example, Tompa 1998: 73-75; Tompa and Brose 2005: 205, 207-210), sometimes with the reasoning that most coins were buried by Roman soldiers before battles. One great flaw in this reasoning, however, is that many other types of ancient coins are sold on the market in addition to Roman coins! Additionally, it is clear that coin hoards are not only found in the middle of fields devoid of associated archaeological remains, but can comprise a large percentage of coin finds from archaeological sites. At the Magdalensberg, for example, approximately 38% of coins were found in hoards at the site (FMRÖ 2.1; and forthcoming unpublished research by S. Krmnicek). In western Germany, one can also see how common hoards are in places such as Cologne (Köln), Trier, and Mainz, where hoards can make up significant percentages of coin finds in ancient settlements (refer to the appropriate volumes of FMRD).

    The argument also defies logic since someone looking for coins to sell for profit (rather than a weekend hobbyist) would naturally begin looking in a known area of habitation rather than empty fields; furthermore, it is well documented that many sites have been spoiled by metal detectorists looking for ancient coins and other metal objects. For example, after the publication of some Iron Age coin finds from Roseldorf, Austria, (Dembski 1991), metal detectorists flocked to the site and robbed it of coins, causing significant damage in the quest for their own personal profit and greed (Dembski 1994; 1995). When Frankfurt University began excavating at Groß-Gerau, a site near Frankfurt, Germany, they were perplexed by the lack of coin finds until they determined the site had already been robbed of coins by a local metal detectorist (per discussions with individuals at Frankfurt University).

    At Burghöfe, Germany, two metal detectorists leisurely despoiled the site of approximately 5,000 coins and 3,000 other metal objects over the course of ten years (Keller 1992; von Kaenel 1994: 7; 1995: 218). Carnuntum, in modern Austria, is also frequented by looters and causes significant problems with the study of the coin finds (Alram and Schmidt-Dick 2007: 64). It is often asserted that ‘collectible’ coins only come from hoards, where they are better preserved (Tompa 1998: 73-75; Tompa and Brose 2005: 205, 207-210). Single finds of excavated coins can be just as well-preserved or ‘collectible’ as hoard coins, contrary to the arguments of the lobby. For example, at Yotvata, Israel —a Late Roman site with a particularly corrosive soil—a large number of the single finds are rather well preserved (see for example figure 5, publication of the coin finds from this site is forthcoming). In short, a collector or dealer who does not demand viable documentation has no notion regarding the origin or circumstances in which that coin was found. Most coins on the market are undoubtedly single finds from archaeological sites or from hoards ripped from their original contexts and associations.

    Those who argue that proper archaeological sites do not produce large numbers of coins are simply unfamiliar with the scholarly literature. Many large hoards and thousands of single finds can be found at sites of varying sizes. Familiarization with the FMRD volumes and similar publications will show that coin finds frequently are found in great numbers at civilian and military sites alike, as the numbers from Burghöfe illustrate. The idea that large hoards, devoid of any archaeological context associated with settlement-remains, satisfy collector and dealer demand is a fallacy; in fact, the selling practices of many coin dealers betray this notion. For example, when looking at bulk lots of coins on eBay and VCoins, one can read in the descriptions various disclaimers that there may be a mixture of Greek, Roman, Islamic, Medieval, or even modern coins in the lots; clearly, these are not the contents of an ancient hoard, but rather the accumulation of coins robbed from multiple archaeological sites with different periods and ranges of occupation.


    I'm not sure what information you think is particularly important about coins, but I want to know when they were used, where, how, and by whom as much as I can, and that seems to be common. We saw above that while a decent number come from "empty field" (though I wonder how many of those are just previously unknown and unexcavated archaeological sites that haven't been explored yet), quite a few come from places of habitation. Like what if this came from the ruins of a temple? An old Christian church? A military camp? A brothel? This hoard was put together someone who was very particular about the silver content of their coins, but was it just one guy being particular, or was there a social or cultural reason for it? Like if it was in a military camp, it could be evidence that local authorities were keeping the better coins for the soldiers. Maybe it was at a church, and it was a sign that the parishioners were tithing their best coins, and maybe the end of the hoard could be used as a piece of evidence that there was Christian persecution activity that was otherwise unknown in whatever settlement this was. There's a lot this might have told us about the local culture, economy, and how these coins worked with it.

    But let's assume that this hoard was in fact in some empty field that otherwise had no archaeological information lost beyond a latitude and longitude. The write up states that whoever made this hoard probably lived near the mint site, and they use that to determine the location. But here's the thing: we don't really know for certain that this was at Antioch. Like that's the likely site given what we know, but to my understanding, that's it. If this was far from Antioch? That would throw a wrench in that hypothesis. Was it right nearby? Then we have further confirmation of what we already believed. Either way, it's told us something significant both about these coins and the economic patterns of this part of the Roman Empire at this time. And if it was found in some really weird location that we can rule out as a mint site? Then that's told us something interesting about migration patterns or how these coins circulated.

    And context isn't just the location a coin was found in. I think it's important to look into the Frome Hoard. This was a 350 pound vessel with over 50,000 coins that dated from the latter half of the third century. The archaeologists who found it had to take the coins out in layers, since the vessel was too fragile, but that led them to an interesting discovery. Normally, if someone gradually added coins to a vessel like this over years, you'd expect the coins to generally get newer as they got towards the top. But here, while there were horizontal layers where coins were around the same age, these layers were all out of order. Like you'd have a layer of newer coins covered by a layer of older coins. So that combined with the fact that the vessel was far too heavy to easily retrieve for whoever buried it meant this wasn't just someone hiding some wealth they intended to recover later. The best hypothesis I've seen is that this was intended as a sacrifice by a community. They got together, put this pot in the ground, then one by one poured in their family's savings, and since they had each built that up over different periods of time, that resulted in the weird layering.

    So what would we know if this hoard had the same history as the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus? Well half the coins would be gone, and those would almost certainly include those beautiful Carausius denarii, but I also wonder if it would have included most if not all of his coins. If enough were missing, we might not even know that this was an English hoard. We certainly wouldn't know that it was all in one giant, nearly impossible to recover vessel, and we would probably have no idea where any coin in the hoard was laid relative to any other. We'd lose what made the hoard strange and interesting, what it told us about a community, and what it told us about how these coins were used. How much like that did we lose with the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus? How much do we lose with all the hoards that are just split up to give us our cheap Constantines?


    I'm going to stop there for now, since that took longer to write up than I intended, and I have things I need to get done today. I will say that some of you have given me some interesting things to think about, though.
     
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  13. Valentinian

    Valentinian Well-Known Member

    Nathan Elkins is a well-known spokesperson for the anti-collecting community. His arguments are full of holes.

    "Sometimes". A straw man argument. "most coins were buried by Roman soldiers before battles". Doe anyone believe this? I have read hundreds of scholarly articles related to hoards and that is a possible explanation for a small fraction of small hoards (individual soldiers were probably not carrying 500 denarii), but far more hoards are thought to be "savings" hoards.

    Even if the battle argument hypothesis were the case (and it is not) the argument hinges on the word "Roman". Does he think Greek soldiers did not participate in battles?

    Why weren't they reporting what they found? Ten years! Horrible!

    Oh! I know (and so does Nathan): Bad German laws. It is too bad Germany does not have a scheme for recording finds and reimbursing finders fairly.

    Does anyone argue this? The argument is that most hoards, and most really big hoards, are found elsewhere (which is true). Also, those thousands of single finds are almost all of grotty coins not worthy of the collector's market. I have numerous publications of what coins were found on some sites (Antioch, Sardis, etc.) and they have only a few plates with the most interesting single-find coins found and even those are mostly in terrible shape and close to worthless. The publications always mention a remarkable fraction of single finds which could not be identified at all. The vast majority of nice coins come from hoards.

    When someone argues, you should put your thinking hat on and evaluate the argument, not just accept it. That argument strikes me as nonsense. Simple nonsense.

    If you can't think of a better hypothesis I'd be surprised. How about, the community was saving up to get enough to build something (a temple?), and added contributions from nearby communities as they came in. How about, someone was building up a war chest with occasional exactions from their vassals (or whatever the right term would be in those days for regions/villages expected/forced to contribute).

    Do you really think people bury 52,000 coins and intend not to retrieve them?

    Yes, I am willing to toss coins into a fountain or spring, and Bath, England, proves it was done. But that is a far cry from burying 52,000 coins in a pot.

    Did you read that? Did you attempt to think about it? Maybe you don't know enough to feel you should pause and evaluate the argument. You just let it "flow over you." Let's consider it.

    I'll go over it piece by piece below.

    First, English laws made all the knowledge of the Frome Hoard possible. English laws. Without something like English laws that sort of knowledge will be lost. Granted. So the solution is already known: Fix the laws!

    How does one read this argument and deduce/suggest that restricting collecting is a fix? The only way to come up with that "conclusion" is not to think but to react emotionally to a misleading sequence of thoughts.

    [Three paragraph aside: Suppose you could makes laws and regulations making it much more difficult to collect. Do you think that would stop metal detectorists who enjoy finding coins from looking? Do you think if you could drop the demand by half or three-quarters that would make it not worthwhile to find, smuggle, and contact someone who wants them?

    Even if collectors "should" not participate in the type of free market we have now, many will anyway. So, why go after collectors when the problem is elsewhere and the solution has been tried and works?

    Change the laws! ]

    Nonsense. They would have been offered on the market and scholars would have found about them just fine. Collectors love having their coins published and love to cooperate with scholars (at least, if the scholars are not anti-collecting snobs).

    True, the Frome Hoard coins might not have all been in that big group together. So what? The explanations of the whole (which was found together) are lacking anyway. It is not like we know a lot about why it was assembled in layers (admitted by Nathan above). It is not like we have a clue about "the community." We don't.

    And, what was that? What would be lost? It told us nothing about a community. It told us nothing about how the coins were used (unless you accept that they were buried without the intention to recover them). Read the argument critically!

    This is tiring. I feel I am arguing against the case of a lawyer with a guilty client who is arguing a very weak case, but the best he can, in favor of his client. Here, the "client" may be the archaeological community who can't get permission to dig unless they toe the party line.
     
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  14. panzerman

    panzerman Well-Known Member

  15. Curtisimo

    Curtisimo the Great(ish)

    Nobody is arguing that people should despoil archaeological sites. They absolutely should not. However if the governments of those countries truly want to say that those coins belong to the state then they have an obligation to protect the coins and the site BEFORE it is disturbed! I have been to archaeological sites all over the world and I can tell you that from my experience the countries that have the strictest laws also seem to spend the least investment in protecting the actual sites, many of which were actually stripped centuries (not months) ago. Many government policies seem to want to push the problem onto the collecting community where looted coins are likely a very, very small minority of the market while taking no responsibility to protect the sites they claim to value so highly.

    By way of illustrating this point, if I leave my gold wedding band unattended in a public place I can assume that most people are honest and wouldn't take it. However, someone might, and its up to me to make arrangements to keep that from happening. If it is stolen then I will call the cops so they can look for the person that took it. I can't turn around and demand that anyone who buys gold bullion for the next six months in the whole country must produce proof that the gold they bought didn't come from my ring! That is not a reasonable deterrent.

    There is an easy fix though if governments don't want to invest in protecting the sites... adopt a British style law that encourages people to report finds! Make detectorist and collectors into allies, not enemies.

    This is the point where a post that starts out interesting begins to completely fall apart. You have no evidence that "most" of the coins on the market are looted from archaeological sites. In fact I would contend that that is nonsense. Everyone knows full well that there are coins found at archaeological sites but the balance of evidence is against you in your claim that most of the market is made up of coins looted from these sites. Sure, you can site a few anecdotal instances of hoards in an archaeological context (still not most!) but there is no proof that the lack of such at other sites mean they were stolen and sold. If you read "Coin Hoards from Roman Britain" as @Valentinian suggests you will clearly see that isolated hoards are much more likely to be the primary source of finds both historically and in modern times.

    Also, ancient coins have been collected and sold for centuries and it is unfair to assume that the majority of the market consists of new finds.

    My biggest problem with this and some of your other posts is that you seem very willing to make some HUGE leaps in interpretation of evidence so long as it fits your conclusion. Many of your arguments read like "no information = confirmation of my conclusion" or "one possible explanation = absolute proof so long as it fits my conclusion".

    You can't know that the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus was not exported perfectly legally for all the reasons I stated in my previous post but you seem very much to want to think that it was not. In my opinion the documentation of this hoard constitutes a step in the right direction and the inclination to want to tear it down for giving you just enough information to come to wild conclusions is baffling.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2018
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  16. Carausius

    Carausius Brother, can you spare a sestertius?

    Elkins may have collected when he was a kid, but he is now one of the loudest voices in the anticollector sector of academia. His vocal opposition is ironic, considering he recently wrote a book that could ONLY appeal to coin collectors. Frankly, I read a chapter and didn't find it particularly deep or insightful. I don't find his views on collecting particularly deep or insightful either - just more of the same drivel that's pushed by others of that ilk.

    I generally encourage readers of this stuff to consider the motivations of the authors. In the case of archaeologists, follow the money - archaeologists benefit from government imposed monopolies on excavating artifacts and, with their vocal support, they want to curry favor from source countries that issue dig permits. They have very real financial motivation to take the source countries' side in the debate. Don't assume they have moral superiority when they argue that coin dealers' motivation is greed.

    Also, don't conflate ethics with law. Laws and government actions are not necessarily ethical. I don't consider laws declaring all historical artifacts to be property of the state as necessarily ethical or moral, particularly when those artifacts are found on private property.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2018
  17. Gao

    Gao Member

    So I've been slowly working to accomplish a few goals with my collecting. One is to get at least one nummus from the first tetrarchy from each mint. Another is to get every reverse type I can for the reign of Gordian III. I've also been trying to get every non-gold imperial denomination from his reign. Haven't been able to find a dupondius in my price range for that one. None of them are complete, and given my low budged and sporadic ability to collect, they won't be completed soon. But as I've been searching, I've learned quite a bit about the histories of this period and about these coins through researching them. Like I'm at the point where I can guess a mint for a nummus correctly just from seeing the bust more often than not. So what have I learned from this that I couldn't learn from reading books or looking up information online? And what will completing any of these add our shared numismatic and historical knowledge?

    Nothing.

    Don't get me wrong, there are certainly people who collect ancient coins who are doing their best to accomplish something meaningful, and several are on this board. But those just trying to collect a complete emperor portrait set? To collect the Twelve Caesars in silver? To collect something in some narrower range like me? We're all just trying to collect trinkets they like to fill holes in an arbitrary list, and we'd all probably contribute exactly as much to the field of numismatics if we instead collected Magic: The Gathering cards. I don't think there's any sort of survey taken of coin collectors about this (and doing one on a forum like this isn't really going to be a random sample of collectors), but I'd be willing to bet you'll have at least a hundred of hole fillers for each person who will even try to find anything meaningful from all the coins they handle.

    And in a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with that. However, I feel like the debate about how to handle coins tends to be framed as "numismatists vs. archaeologists" and who will take better care of coins and get better, more valuable information, etc.. But I'm not a numismatist in any sense other than being a collector for what I've done than I was a scientist for reading Discover Magazine every month as a teenager, nor are all those other people just trying to fill empty holes. Like it or not, these are most of the people who are involved in the ancient coin trade. Some who do meaningful numismatic work like them, some want them to stop, and some have views in between. In the grand scheme of things, any debate about ethics or laws about the ancient coin industry is primarily about whether it's worth the cost for us hole fillers to keep buying our trinkets the way we've been doing it, not the study of numismatics.


    So are dealer and hole fillers good custodians of these artifacts?
    According to this very thread, I was overestimating the value dealers and collectors had of keeping any kind of paperwork or evidence of the country of origin for ancient coins until recently. And let's be clear; keeping a piece of paper in a file folder or at least writing down where something came from on a flip is something that takes very little effort. So is a dealer adding a line saying "this coin came from..." to a receipt. To be frank, we've been lazy and neglectful of preserving basic information about the objects we say we love. And yes, I included myself in this. These are pieces of history. We're allowing a lot of that history to be stripped from them for really seemingly no reason, and it sounds like the only thing that's making some people change is worry about law enforcement taking actions that collectors don't like. Honestly, if it takes the threat of possibly losing part of a collection or having a sale seized to make us do the bare minimum we should have been doing the whole time, maybe that threat really is necessary.

    On laws
    So I think there are really two different issues that are being conflated:

    1. Are laws like the ones I brought up good?
    2. Should I break those laws?

    With regards to 1, I don't disagree that extremely strict rules that block all ownership or trafficking of artifacts tend not to help. Even one of the articles I linked from UNESCO pointed out that an open, regulated market tends to cause less harm than if there's only a black market. However, it can be more complicated than that. An article I stumbled onto the other day (which I can try to find again if anyone's interested) was arguing that Lebanon's 1933 law was actually pretty good, with the government getting first pass at antiquities, paying a fair price for them if they're acquired, and letting them go for sale if they don't want them. It sounds similar to the English law. But the problem is that people in Lebanon generally don't trust the government to pay them fairly, so they immediately go to the black market. That's a complicated issue that can't be solved simply by making the law more or less restrictive.

    As for the second, let's assume that in the next few years, US military memorabilia becomes really popular overseas.* Ebay gets filled with medals, uniforms, etc. whose prices keep going up and up as buyers from Lebanon and Turkey and Egypt buy up as much as they can. Because of this, looting breaks out in military cemeteries across the country. Everything from grave clothes to grave markers gets taken, thrown up on Ebay or V-Soldiers with no provenance given for their origin. Rarely a day goes by when another grave at Arlington is emptied or another veteran's home robbed.

    So after this has been going on for like a decade, you take a vacation in Lebanon. By this point, let's assume they solved all the issues they had with the antiquities market, and you've heard that this curio shop has some ancient coins for sale. You head in, and half the shop is filled with this US military memorabilia. There's medals, uniforms, grave markers, and full on headstones. You ask him if those are real, and he assures you that he guarantees authenticity of all items for life. So you ask him where it all came from, and he says that he bought it all from private collectors and dealers, but it's really impossible to tell the exact origin source of any of these items due to how many times they changed hands before it came to him. You bring up that the chances that a headstone of a Civil War veteran was legally exported is pretty slim and you're uncomfortable with him selling that, but he assures you that he isn't knowingly selling anything that was looted. Besides, he goes on, US law is hardly helping looting matters. He explains how a more regulated market would help deal with the problem instead of just straight up banning the sale of items from military graves. Besides, he's not the kind of guy who'd sell the actual bodies of US soldiers like they do in Egypt. And it's not like the culture or people from back then have much to do with who's living in the US today. You're probably not even related to the soldiers these things originally belonged to.

    Would you be OK with that? Or would you be a tad upset with this guy knowing full well that at least a large chunk of his inventory was your country's looted heritage? Would a discussion of exactly how US law should handle this change your mind? I'm thinking for most people, at least in the US, the answer would be no. The United States has sovereignty over American land, and a I'd consider someone who violated that, who violated our laws to fill out their collection of pieces of our history to be at best an asshole.

    I'm not saying that digging up coin hoards is usually grave robbery (though that certainly is part of the illegal antiquities trade). But think about how you'd react to the above scenario, the demographics of ancient coin collectors, and the countries with laws to protect what they see as their cultural property. Most of us are white guys of Western European decent. To treat the sovereignty of what are often Middle Eastern and African countries over their own land and their own historical legacy as irrelevant when it comes in the way of filling holes in your trinket collection is pretty much peak white privilege. It's massively disrespectful, and for most of us, born out of pure selfishness and disregard for those who aren't in our in group.

    That said, while most of us are hole fillers, people doing actual, meaningful numismatic study do exist. And it's quite possible that something comes on the market from a shady source, but there's something is unusual about it that should be studied by a numismatist. Is it worth putting money into the grey (at best) market to get it studied? That's a complicated enough issue that at best, I feel like it should be judged on a case by case basis. Like if you think that Malloy was justified in buying this hoard to do a proper study of it before it got broken up further even if its legality is at best ambiguous? I'm not sure I'd call you entirely wrong. But keep in mind that such a justification only goes up to such a study. Any further sale of the coins, unless it's to someone else for meaningful numismatic study, is just buying a coin of dubious legality to fill a hole in your collection.

    *If you're outside the US, pretend I'm using references to your home country.

    Revising my judgement on the legality of the Antioch Gallienus Hoard
    It looks like I was overestimating how much paperwork was valued back then, and we have at least one example of a hoard hanging around for a surprisingly long time in private hands after being dug up. Those are definitely factors to account for when we're trying to figure out whether this hoard was exported legally. Another important factor I hadn't brought up is that Lebanon had a civil war from 1975-1990, and during that period, there was a massive surge in illegally exported antiquities.

    So what we have is a hoard that is likely from Syria or Lebanon, though Turkey is still possible. It came on the market right after a long surge of illegal antiquities exports from Lebanon. The Lebanese system of licensing antiquities dealers sounds like it collapsed in the early 80s as well, so it can't have been legally exported from that country after then. As for the other countries, Syria still limits its exports quite a bit, and it sounds like Turkey just doesn't allow them. Looking at that I still have to say that it's more likely than not that this hoard was exported illegally, and if I had to put money on it, I'd say it was probably one of the many, many items that was smuggled out of Lebanon during that civil war.

    On ethics, laws, and individual collectors
    So it seems a common response is something along the lines of "change the laws." While I agree that many of these laws need revising, that's kind of an odd response to bring up to someone who does not live in those countries and doesn't have the slightest way of influencing those laws. As far as I know, we don't have anyone in those countries on the board. It's probably not on purpose, but all this does is divert the question from what, if anything, an individual collector outside of those countries should do.

    So how much influence does one collector have? Unless you're buying and selling huge amounts, not much. None of us on our own are going to stop these problems. But no big changes come from just one individual. It's about enough people taking actions, and that requires the actions of us individuals. Each one of us who stops buying questionable coins moves the demand curve for such things ever so slightly to the left, and the less lucrative we make this part of the market, the less incentive there is to loot. We're not going to stop it completely, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't each use that tiny amount of influence we have to do what we can.

    What I'm primarily asking is that we think about what we buy. Like if you see a dealer with nice coins on Ebay, but he only occasionally gives provenance as something like "the Balkans" and has a handful of random artifacts that it sometimes identifies as being Bulgarian? Ask yourself what the chances are that he's getting these legally. And think about the coins themselves and their circulation. There are certainly coins that had circulation so wide that there's almost no way to figure out a likely find site from the coin itself, like Roman denarii. But, say, a provincial bronze of Pisidian Antioch? How many of those do you honestly think ever made it out of Pisidia let alone the modern border of Turkey before modern times? It's probably not zero, but do you honestly think those few are what you're seeing all over V-Coins and Ebay? There are plenty of coin types where you can show that the vast majority were traded over a small area. If you see one of those, and you know that country it was likely found in has had strict export laws since before metal detectors were common, are you sure you want to buy it?

    On noobs and how we introduce the hobby
    So I don't feel like I was making informed decisions when I bought most of my coins, and I'm wondering how many other people feel the same at this point. Like for all the intro sites and books I read, few mentioned smuggling at all. Like at most it would be acknowledged as a thing, but then followed up by noting that plenty of legally dug coins have been traded for ages, and then acted like there wasn't much to worry about. Strict export laws only came up when it affected US collectors, which made it sound like it was a new phenomenon. Don't get me wrong, I should have checked on this sort of stuff myself instead of naively following along with the community and not thinking about it too hard. But there are a lot of purchases that I never would have made if I had been aware of, say, the fact that Turkey banned antiquities exports in 1869.

    How are new people supposed to make informed decisions about the hobby if we're not informing them? You don't have to approve the laws or anything, but shouldn't you be upfront and let people know that's a thing so that they can decide the ethics themselves? Why aren't we telling them this?

    For that matter, I've never seen any store acknowledge this. They have obvious reasons not to want to, but shouldn't there at least be a disclosure like "While I cannot guarantee that ever coin left its country of origin legally, as ancient coins change often hands many times without leaving records, everything I sell either comes from a US (or whatever country) collector or was exported by someone with a verified export license"? Also, does V-Coins check export licenses of its sellers from countries where that's relevant? It's not not mentioned on the code of ethics.

    On the Frome Hoard and field finds

    I think this hoard is important, so I'm going to more directly answer some comments.

    This isn't the first hoard that was probably a votive offering. The East Leicestershire Hoards had clear signs of being votive offerings around a century and a half before the Frome Hoard (and itself is more evidence of how much context of a hoard can tell us both about the use of coins and history). And while the Frome Hoard certainly has more coins, nearly 10 times as many, we need to keep in mind what kinds of coins were in each hoard. The Frome Hoard was almost all heavily debased antoniniani, with a handful of nice denarii of Carausius. What was found and Leicestershire was all silver and gold. Most likely, this earlier collection of hoards represented more wealth than what was buried at Frome. So given that we know that people sometimes did make offerings of even greater amounts of money with no intention to ever recover them, that the vessel at Frome is one that they had to have known was far to heavy to recover without great difficulty (remember that they could have just buried multiple small vessels instead), and the strange order of coins inside indicating wealth from multiple sources being added at once, I'd have to say that the ritual offering hypothesis is quite a strong one.

    But let's look at what you suggested. If the community was saving up for something big that they planned to buy, why did they put it all in one gigantic jar that they'd have so much trouble recovering? It's not like pottery was that hard to make and they just happened to have that one giant jar around for some reason. In addition, significantly sized buildings cost a LOT of money. Could they really afford much with even this many debased antoniniani? Like it would probably have to be something small. And if a whole community knew where it was, why didn't any recover it? And if that many people knew about it, why were they even burying it? Like I guess forcing someone to use a shovel if they want to steal it would slow them down a little, but isn't the point to make sure people don't know about it?

    In any case, this would still teach us about the ancient world should a convincing argument for this hypothesis be offered. Like it would be pretty good evidence that a community got wiped out around this time. And it would tell us something about the community practices when it came to public buildings. And it might tell us that despite all the debasement, you could still built significant public works without significant amounts of precious metals. That seems like a lot of information we could find out if you made a good enough case for this interpretation, and all of it would be gone if the hoard weren't documented properly.

    So how about the warchest hypothesis? Again, we have the issue that this hoard was stored in such a way that it was very difficult to recover. Why would someone who wished to recover these coins at some point do this? And if someone was suddenly building up a war chest, wouldn't he keep it with him for easy access? Like why bury it if you have guards or you think you're going to use it soon? And he probably would have to use it soon given how unstable that period was.

    But let's assume that someone makes a good enough case to show that this was the likely scenario despite all this. Then this is an important data point for figuring out the history of Carausius' rule over Britain, which is something that's pretty poorly documented. If we can figure out which person was likely to have buried this (something that would take some work, but might be doable), we might be able to figure out how much he planned to pay his soldiers and get a rough idea of soldier pay in the area at the time. And I have a feeling that you'd be able to get something out of Carausius' coins being all in one layer, indicating that one person or one community worked with him, but not the rest. Basically, we'd once again have a bunch of information that we would not have if we didn't have archaeologists record the find properly.

    In addition, I think it's important to note that even if all you have is the contents of a hoard and knowing that it was from an empty field, you can still learn a lot. This article from COINS IN CONTEXT I New perspectives for the interpretation of coin finds is worth a read. It's about medieval hoards in Sweden, which is something I don't think many of us have direct interest in, but the way the author analyzed the hoards is important. She showed that there were some interesting differences between those hoards in open fields than those buried elsewhere, and like the above two hoard locations, she suggests that these were also buried without intent to ever recover them, though this time for rather different reasons. But the important thing is that just because a hoard is found in an open field, it doesn't mean that it won't tell us important archaeological information. This paper could not have been written without those hoards being recorded.

    I think I should also be specific as to why I'm bringing this up, as it's not really to justify the laws of these countries exactly as they are:
    1. The destruction of context is a serious issue even for coins. Ever time someone digs up a hoard or even individual coin and doesn't record the circumstances of its origin, we lose a piece of information about the ancient world. The exact significance and amount of this information will vary depending on the find, but the above examples show us that such hoards can give us significant information about religious practices in the regions of the hoards.
    2. Buying coins from smugglers who don't record find information properly is helping to support the loss of this information.
    3. The intent of these laws is a good one that benefits anyone who cares more about coins as historical objects than as trinkets to collect, even if the execution of these laws is often very lacking. You should think carefully about whether you want to disrespect these laws, and if you do, how and under what circumstances you feel that it's justified.

    I should point out that the above is not a blanket condemnation of numismatic studies or collecting. Clearly plenty of good things have come out of those studies. But pretty much every field of study has had histories of methods that we'd now find unethical, destructive, counterproductive, or just plain bad. Like do you want to know how not to do archaeology? Read up on Heinrich Schiemann's methods. Dude found Troy, but essentially also destroyed a huge chunk of it in the process. But archaeology has since looked carefully at what he'd done, revised their methods, and did better. The next generation did the same, as did the next. Most likely, in a hundred years, they'll have a whole load of new methods and cringe at how we did it in the early 21st century. The important thing is that people did their best to preserve the good things they were getting out of archaeology and improve upon its negative aspects. I'm asking that numismatists and collectors acknowledge that we're currently in a state where harm is being done along with the good, and we work to improve how we do things. We don't have to deny or abandon the good we've already done to do that.

    On archaeologists
    OK, look. If you think someone who had a long, hard education and then used that to get into academia is primarily motivated by money, then you either have some pretty distorted ideas about academic salaries or you there's a university you should be telling all the grad students about. That's all I'm going to say about the weird conspiracy theories that are stating to come about here.
     
    ycon likes this.
  18. Curtisimo

    Curtisimo the Great(ish)

    Okay everyone, I really need to stop reading and commenting on this thread because it is obvious that no good is coming out of it and the thread just wont die. However, I can't help myself after the most recent post so I hope all my coin-friends will excuse me one more reply.

    I at least give you credit for trying to step out of the situation and reason through it logically using a parallel. Unfortunately your comparison just doesn't work.

    Ancient coins were meant as mass produced commodities for export like I clearly explained in my first post. They were meant to leave their home country and the home country had an economic benefit because of that. A better analogy would be if the US government demanded the return of all Silver and Gold Eagle bullion coins from overseas without compensation. Pretty much a breach of why the coins were issued in the first place.

    Plus coins that you would think might be found only regionally actually traveled extremely far with some regularity. Persian siglos (struck to serve the needs of coastal Anatolia) are often found with Indian punch marks! You cannot make a conclusion on where a coin was found based on what it is. Period.

    Take this for what it is worth but I hardly think you have a good enough track record to be lecturing the rest of us on cultural sensitivity. In your previous thread THAT WAS DELETED by the moderators for this kind of nonsense you managed to accuse and insinuate some very ignorant things about people from both China and Bulgaria. We have a pretty broad cross section here at CT with many of our most prominent members NOT falling into your stereotype. As such this comment strikes me as yet another in a string of ignorant and offensive statements.

    WE DO!!! As I already said we all want to know where our coins came from and where they have been. I have spent countless hours trying to research this for all my coins. The problem is it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a provenance on almost all cheap coins past where you bought it and possibly one step further back. Many of the coins I have at one time or another passed through a dealer or collector that has passed away (which is how a lot of coins come to market!). You keep bringing this up like there is something more we can do about it? Photography was too expensive for coins until very recently. If you're suggesting that we can only own coins that we can provide proof came from before a set date before about 2012 then almost no one will be able to own ancient coins anymore.

    The world you want to live in just doesn't exist and is not even possible (or reasonable)!

    The answer is so obvious it is actually painful. If you were going to store a huge sum of money to spend wouldn't you WANT it to be troublesome to recover? That's why our modern banks have one door vaults where the valuables are kept! If you want to keep track of a large sum you put it in one place and make it hard for an individual to steal without notice... big pot, problem solved. In fact I would think a sacrifice would be more likely to be kept in multiple smaller jars because then no one cares about keeping track of it.

    I have never given this advice before and I hope never to have to again but if this is truly the way you feel about the hobby and your place in it then I encourage you to stop collecting immediately. You should enjoy the things you do with your free time and they should hold some amount of meaning for you. If this hobby is causing you as much internal struggle as some of your previous threads suggest I say that life is too short to continue with such a distraction. Go find something you can feel good about doing and leave the study of coins to those who want to do right by it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2018
  19. red_spork

    red_spork Triumvir monetalis

    You've got a pretty narrow view. There are plenty of collectors living in Egypt, Italy, Greece and Hungary but they don't always join the online discussion and many collectors have no idea just how many of them exist. Why? The same anti-collector laws that you equate with "sovereignty" restrict the citizens of these countries from collecting or require them to jump through so many hoops that many aren't willing to openly advertise their hobby. There's no telling how many never get into the hobby at all simply because of the legal climate in their countries.
     
  20. Carausius

    Carausius Brother, can you spare a sestertius?

    Quite the contrary, the United States (my home) is regularly being asked to enter into memoranda of understanding with source countries to impose import restrictions on source country cultural property. These source countries are either unable or unwilling to enforce their own draconian laws, so they look to U.S. taxpayers to pay for heightened border searches to do the job for them. Under these circumstances, I'd argue that every taxpaying U.S. citizen has an interest in the reform of draconian cultural property laws of source countries into systems reasonably capable of being enforced within the source country's own borders. Our way of influencing such reform is to lobby our legislators and state department to prohibit future MoUs with any source country that does not reform to a report-incentivising system, like the U.K.'s Portable Antiquities Scheme.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2018
  21. Ed Snible

    Ed Snible Well-Known Member

    @Gao you have some good points.

    You don’t have to venture into science fiction to talk discuss foreign collections of American goods. Native American goods, such as arrowheads, are collected worldwide today. Most are surface finds but I am sure some are illicitly from burial sites. The commercial trade rarely benefits the descendants of the Native Americans who made the arrowheads.

    In Burton Berry’s Numismatic Biography he talks about buying coins in the Middle East between the Wars. Originally everyone was friendly to him. The local antiquarians were happy he took an interest in their culture. After World War II the souk traders started getting word of the high price westerners got auctioning ancient coins in Geneva. There were a lot of hard feelings because the Europeans were getting the lion’s share of the profits.

    Today with the Internet the playing field is leveling. I hope that as the Arab Spring takes root it will become legal for everyone to own a few ancient coins. I hope the digital resources we are creating are helping collectors in the Mediterranean learn about their own ancient cultures. I hope online price guides make it impossible for anyone to trick easterners the way Barry’s contemporaries did.
     
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