Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 2136773, member: 19409&quot;]Part of the problem is that it&#039;s not just what happens to the coins in the long run; it&#039;s about the destruction of context.&nbsp; Whether coins were found in a house, in the middle of nowhere, or in what was some sort of destroyed treasury tells us something about the site and its connection to these items and the ancient economy.&nbsp; Let&#039;s take that Antioch Hoard of Gallienus.&nbsp; It&#039;s assumed that it came from near the mint site given the state of these coins and their uniformity to that mint.&nbsp; But what if it turned out that they were dug up somewhere really unexpected, like near Alexandria?&nbsp; That would give us good reason to reconsider how these coins moved through that period.&nbsp; But since the source of these coins is clouded in mystery, we&#039;ll never know if anything unusual was going on.</p><p><br /></p><p>Even the relative positions of coins within a hoard can provide us with information.&nbsp; Consider the Frome Hoard.&nbsp; If those were just dumped on the market anonymously, we&#039;d know that it most likely came from England due to the coins within, but it probably would have been assumed that they were just someone&#039;s savings thrown in a few jars and buried haphazardly.&nbsp; However, the archaeologists carefully kept track of where the coins were, and they discovered that there seemed to be layers of certain types.&nbsp; That combined with the shier weight of the single jar they were in (heavy enough where it would be extremely difficult to retrieve) has led to the conclusion that this wealth was from multiple families who each poured in their money, then buried it without the intent to recover it, probably as some sort of sacrifice.&nbsp; We&#039;d have no way of knowing this without careful recovery and recordkeeping, and I have to wonder what other weird things we&#039;re missing from other coin digs.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not saying that coin collecting is ruining all archaeology forever or that it&#039;s doing more than a tiny fraction of the damage that the current Middle East conflicts are doing to archaeological sites, but the trade of ancient coins does have a cost.&nbsp; At the very least, we should try to buy coins with provenance when they&#039;re available and avoid buying coins when we have good reason to think their source isn&#039;t on the up and up (i.e. the Antioch Gallienus Hoard or those Eastern European guys on ebay who have small lots of things that they clearly just dug out of the ground).&nbsp; Ideally we&#039;d have some way to pressure dealers to be better about providing us with provenance, but I doubt that&#039;s going to be easy to do.&nbsp; I&#039;d also like to see VCoins have an option to search for coins with provenance the same way you can check off a box to show only Roman Imperial coins.&nbsp; Forvm now has a section for that, and I applaud them for it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in