Coin dealer says Archaeologists Should Compromise and Let Them Get the Loot Too

.

I discussed the other day legal expert Derek Fincham's apparent insistence that it is the archaeologist who should bend to suit the needs of the market in portable antiquities. Now, less surprisingly, we have the same thing from coin dealer Dave Welsh. He is still going on about the "Near Shrewsbury" hoard of late Roman Bronzes. He reckons that coin dealer Cameron Day’s comments on what I wrote about the hoard:

does not align with the knee-jerk reaction of Paul Barford, who apparently believes that nothing should ever be unearthed by anyone who is not an archaeologist.

Too true that a coin dealer's views would not "align with" what an archaeologist would say. For what its worth, I think there is a difference between a little old lady who digs her rose border and digs up a stone axehead, and a bloke with a metal detector who goes out looking for stuff to collect and sell. If Ivor Deetecta finds in an English field three silver coins, and then three more in the same spot and then five more, the Code of Practice to the Treasure Act says what he should do - and of course that is not "hoik the lot out yerself". There is a reason for this. Archaeologists should be good at "doing archaeology", Ivor Deetector not necessarily. Frankly I would not trust Bazza the bloke down the road with a sharp knife to operate on my cat because he’s cheaper and nearer than going to the vet. Why be satisfied with second best? Obviously part of the problem here is the sheer ignorance of those that think that archaeology is just about "digging things (artefacts) out of the ground". Is this the fault of archaeology I wonder, are we failing to get the message over about what archaeology is and what archaeologists do? If so, what should we be doing about it? (Who should be doing it?) Welsh goes further:

However, it is still appropriate to question whether such a relentlessly archaeology-centric perspective should govern society's overall approach to the discovery and disposition of buried artifacts.

No, no I do not think that is at all "appropriate". Could one say that an ecology-centric perspective should not be central to society's overall approach to the exploitation of the natural environment, because that is what the oilmen, factory owners and loggers think?

Again it comes down to the perception of archaeology. We are not of course just talking about an artefacto-centric “discovery and disposition of buried artifacts” as such but protecting the more holistic resource which is the archaeological record (which as most educated people should know is more than just collectable geegaws in a meaningless matrix). As for Welsh’s manifesto that:

a balanced and sensible societal perspective regarding buried artifacts has to recognize that the interests of archaeology necessarily must compete with and be reconciled with all other involved interests […]”

I’d turn that round. The interests of the minority engaged in collecting necessarily must be reconciled with all other involved interests. That includes archaeology and resource conservation. Indeed, since there is nothing inherently uncollectable in a provenanced artefact then one wonders what all the fuss is about, what these collectors (dealers in fact) are kicking against and why.

Welsh then goes off on another tack completely in an extremely belligerent and provocative fashion about precisely why the market cannot tolerate calls for a more ethical collecting of provenanced artefacts. I am going to address that in the post above this.

Photo: Mohammed, Rashid and Tariq and their families here at Isin in Iraq want to dig up things for collectors too, they agree with Mr Welsh - why should it be just archaeologists who excavate sites?