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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 3776695, member: 44316&quot;]I sent in a long comment opposing the MOU&#039;s (below). I hope you will make a short comment. I don&#039;t think length is helpful, but I had a lot to say.</p><p><br /></p><p>I strongly oppose the proposed MOU&#039;s with Morocco and Yemen. They cover coins that have no cultural connection with their present-day governments and they cover coins that may have left the country legally long ago. Ancient coins should not be included. I suspect the proposal is being promoted by those sympathetic to the arguments of the archaeological community who oppose collecting. But those arguments are wrong and misguided and MOU&#039;s will not have the consequences they hope for. </p><p><br /></p><p>I have been told I am the most-cited scholar in the area of ancient coins. I am an elected Fellow of The American Numismatic Society. My interest was kindled by collecting and my contributions would not have occurred without collecting. Furthermore, my area of speciality (die-study statistics) relies on numerous published examples of coins, the great majority of which were published by dealers for collectors. Without easy access to ancient coins on the market, I venture to say more than half the Ph.D.s in ancient numismatics could not have been written! </p><p><br /></p><p>So, *collecting is good for scholarship*. A substantial percentage of the scholarly works on ancient-coins were written by amateurs who became experts because of their collections. (I am actively consulting with one this week.) </p><p><br /></p><p>If the objective is to preserve archaeological information then suppressing collecting is a misguided approach that will inevitably fail. Furthermore, it will have negative unintended consequences that will far outweigh the potential (but illusory) positives. After paying attention to this for a long time I still wonder why very intelligent people in the archaeological information game remain PC and don&#039;t risk saying the obvious &quot;This approach won&#039;t work!&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>The full line of thought is something like this. &quot;Archaeology provides valuable information. Looting of archaeological sites causes information to be lost. Looting occurs because looters hope to find things of value. Collecting causes objects to have value. Therefore, shutting down collecting, or at least making it much more difficult, will increase archaeological information.&quot; The last step in the argument is simply false. </p><p><br /></p><p>Here are just a few points I could expand upon: There is an assumption that laws somehow force behavior to accord with the laws. You might as well pass laws against pre- and extra-marital sex (or alcohol). Perhaps a good idea, but it goes on anyway. </p><p><br /></p><p>Far less academic information comes out of countries with restrictive laws than countries that support collecting. That&#039;s a fact. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the chain of economics from looter to collector there are already strong laws agains looting. </p><p><br /></p><p>We, in the US, would like to think that a person is who he is, which is not determined by his fore-bearers. The creators of ancient coins are long gone. Cultural patrimony belongs, not to the state happening to occupy certain territory (often of an unrelated culture), but to the world. Recall that Turkey claims Greek coins found on its soil, and Greece claimed an EID MAR Roman denarius arguably found on its soil. Claims of cultural patrimony are hypocritical. Governments regard coins as having value and are as greedy as any collector. </p><p><br /></p><p>People have sought treasure and defiled archaeological sites for thousands of years--long before there was a market in antiquities and numismatic coins. Information that hoards have beyond just the existence of the coins may be lost--not because coins are found by treasure seekers, but because governments claim ownership and do not adequately reward finders. Only England, with its rational Treasure Trove law, has many well-recorded hoards. For example, Italy, with it&#039;s draconian laws about hoards, has few well-recorded hoards. (Duncan-Jones, in an article on the mobility of coins from place to place, stated he had to leave out Italy because there were too few recorded hoards!) </p><p><br /></p><p>There are relatively few academics and a large number of amateurs (in the best sense of the word) making contributions to scholarship about ancient coins. Professional scholars are not able to deal with the volume of information and the amateurs who do are collectors and most would not be involved if collecting were not a motivation. For example, it took academics over 50 years to publish the very limited amount of material in the Dead Sea Scrolls! </p><p><br /></p><p>*Please do not include ancient coins in any MOU.* The &quot;scholarly&quot; reasons to include them do not hold up under scrutiny. It may be that those governments think they have value (they do) and want to confiscate coins. There are many instances of local officials, including museum curators, illicitly selling coins they were supposedly responsible for. Outlawing traffic means criminals take it over (It doesn&#039;t go away). Collectors are far better custodians of ancient coins than those governments. Let coins come into the US where any information they contain will have a much better chance of becoming public.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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