More Typical Stuff and Nonsense from the US on "Where ancient coins come from"

Jorg Lueke writes on his “Ancient Coin Trade” blog that “at the most recent meeting of the Twin Cities Ancient Coin Club we were treated to a presentation by a long time member and metal detectorist”. He must mean Jon Buck "Medieval Keys and Coins," March 26th, 2009. Apparently Mr Buck “told a lot of interesting stories of himself and associates going on trips for detecting. A lot of the trips were in England. But through connections he has travelled to over 27 countries” ("metal detecting"?). Perhaps the trips to England were with the “England Detecting Adventure!”firm run by a mysterious individual known to outsiders only as “Roy” which has a pretty full schedule for guests from the US, paying a mere 2000 dollars a head a week to take away little pieces of the nation's archaeological record to brighten up their otherwise drab lives. Lueke reckons that:

in talking with people who have metal detected for decades it is clear that coins aren't found by detectorists stratified amidst sites. For one detectorists go to plowed fields which can't really be excavated in most cases certainly not in the plowed surface. Secondly coins buried for long times are succeptible to
be moved by erosion, water, animals, along with the plows and other tools of man.

Nowhere near as much as they are moved by “metal detectorists” putting them in their bags and carting them off to Minnesota.

Now tour-going US detectorists might not be aware too much what kind of sites guides like “Roy” select so their punters can have something to find, week after week, with different groups coming back to the same fields. I have no personal knowledge of “Roy’s” business practices, but do know that those “on the inside” and who know what-is-what accuse firms like this of “salting” fields so that finders can go home thinking they have not spent thousands of dollars in vain. So while on a metal detecting holiday, Mr Buck’s knowledge of field conditions is only reliant on what “Roy” and his firm show him.

Lueke concludes:

“Could it be that some archaeologists simply can't leave aside the paradigm of their education when it comes to field archaeology? Are they stuck believing in a process that works great for certain types of discoveries even though for other artifacts the process become sill suited? In other words do they see every coin floating in a field as a nail to be struck by the full weight of procedural excavation? If so that explains a lot. It would also imply that archaeologists need some new training to be able to distinguish a meaningful, stratified site where context is key from scattered small coins and artifacts dispersed by loss, time, and erosion. The obsession with archaeological context when it comes to coins is a prime example.”

Oh dear. Coin-accumulating Mr Lueke, who it would seem has never in his life read a proper archaeology book, nevertheless presumes to explain to the rest of the world that archaeologists have got it all wrong. Well, of course it is Lueke who has got it all wrong as he has obviously fallen for the stereotype that all archaeologists "do" is dig holes, and has apparently never heard of landscape survey (even though I know for a fact they do it in the US, though perhaps not in the middle of St Paul Minnesota). Mr Lueke, if you are going to try to dissect archaeological methodology, perhaps it would be an idea to find out what it is? It’s not rocket science.

What is obvious, surely even to a US coin collector, is that archaeological artefacts removed from an assemblage or site or any other part of the archaeological record cease to be archaeological evidence allowing that assemblage or site to be properly interpreted. The evidential value of a site is damaged and the artefact becomse a commercialised gee-gaw. The collectors who pay dealers from the coins coming from the commercial exploitation of the archaeological record are contributing to its erosion and destruction, and no amount of weasel-worded trying to pretend otherwise will change that fundamental truth.

Photo: Jorg Lueke (the anti-archaeological chip on his shoulder is not visible in this shot).