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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 2878837, member: 44316&quot;]How about whole countries that do not take the steps likely to find out about&nbsp; pedigrees? </p><p><br /></p><p>If you penalize and do not reward finders, pedigrees disappear. Only England with its rational Treasure Trove law encourages finders to report finds. Many other countries confiscate finds, or reward them very poorly, so that most finds immediately go to the back market. For example, before the euro, one German found a hoard of about 1000 aurei and got 7 Deutschmarks apiece as his reward. So few finds are reported in Italy that the late Duncan-Jones (who was a quantitative historian/numismatist at Cambridge with whom I worked a bit) wrote he could not use Italy in his hoard studies--there were not enough hoards recorded.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyone who follows hoard reports knows that many times as many coins are found in hoards outside of pre-existing archaeological digs as as found in them. If you read all the archaeological reports you would find almost no information from the coins in them other than we found such-and-such a coin (if that). The total information from archaeological sites related to coins is minuscule compared to the information from the coins themselves and hoards. Don&#039;t believe it when someone asserts coins are really important to archaeology or archaeology contributes a lot to numismatics by putting coins &quot;in context&quot;. That&#039;s baloney. (If you disagree, don&#039;t point out that someone said it is so, point to actual information. It is very rare on the ground.) </p><p><br /></p><p>Countries other than England don&#039;t make a rational attempt to preserve pedigrees.&nbsp; The idea that making it harder to collect will help (help what?) is false and misguided. I invite you to google your favorite ancient-coin topic. When you find a good link, ask yourself it that info came from an archaeologist or a collector. Ask yourself if that info came from the mere existence of the coin or a hoard, or if pre-existing &quot;archaeological context&quot; contributed. (It didn&#039;t.)</p><p><br /></p><p>If hoards can be safely reported, as they are in England, wonderful scholarly work such as <i>The Cunetio Treasure</i> can result. Is there anything like it from Italy? No. From Turkey? No. From Greece? No.</p><p><br /></p><p>Collectors contribute to scholarship and knowledge of the past far more than collecting detracts. Making it harder to collect will not produce the results its proponents claim to desire.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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