More Coiney Misunderstanding in the US

The coineys in the US are excited by the announcmnt of the find of 52000 coins in a pot in the UK. According to lawyer Peter Tompa, the find is interesting because:

The finder helpfully did not disturb the large pot that protected most of the coins from the elements so that archaeologists could perform additional studies about the hoard's composition.

Well, no, once again we see the object-centred 'understanding' of the collector in play. The archaeologists' investigations determined not only the stratigraphy of the context (that it was in a pit which had some kind of organic element in its fill, and hopefully we will now learn something from further investigation about the context of the pit), but also that within the hoard, suggesting that it was not a single deposit, but had been added to over a period, which enables its interpretation (so not really the sort of thing you'd expect from the Dave Welsh/ ACCG soldier's pay hidden at the edge of a battlefield nonsense). It is numismatists in the BM that are now studying the coins themselves.

But what makes the find more interesting for Tompa is his presumption that:

the authorities (sic) will retain the most interesting coins for future display after payment of a reward based on market value. The others will then be returned to the finder after recordation, and then sold to collectors. The news again underscores the benefits of the British and Welsh approach to handling common artifacts like coins. This system ensures hoards are recorded, and also that the State only keeps what it can reasonably be expected to care for. As for me, I look forward to the opportunity to purchase one of the coins from the hoard for my own collection. The fact that I will know this coin's provenance will be plus that is its own testament to the wisdom of the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme.

It would be nicer to see some of these people writing stuff which reveals the wisdom and knowledge of the collecting milieu wouldn't it? Leaving aside the "recordation", note that Tompa only sees museums solely as places where items are "displayed". This is despite the fact that the PAS website speaks plainly of the two years conservation and study that is taking place in the British Museum. Dusting the showcases full of pretty and "interesting" things is only part of what a museum does, but time and time again we see collectors claiming that if an object in a museum collection is not on display at a given moment, it is "superfluous to needs" and can be disposed of (again, I repeat the question from yesterday, where is the Peter Tompa collection "displayed"?) Perhaps the problem is that US museums only display "art" items donated by rich patrons, and do not contain to the same degree as in Europe in their collections material from the research archives of local excavations ? Is that where these constant misunderstandings about the roles of museums as curators of archaeological material arise?

Tompa seems to think that the coins from the Frome Hoard will be coming on the market after teh Treasure Inquest. He says that this would be so "that the State only keeps what it can reasonably be expected to care for". It is "reasonable" to expect that a hoard recovered by an archaeological investigation will remain intact as the part of the archive from that research project [not scattered like the raw data from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Centre]. That does not seem so difficult to understand, does it? [Climate deniers have no problem understanding it in the EAU case.] With the newspapers trumpeting how jolly ("nationally") important the whole group of items found together in the closed context of the Frome Hoard is, why does Tompa think it will be sold off piecemeal? The whole idea of the Treasure Act is to get items of importance FOR the national collections rather than them being scattered on the market by their finders. (!)Is the ACCG now going to attack "British archaeological nationalism" over this?

No doubt Mr Tompa, collector "with a special interest in Greek coins from the city states of Magna Graecia and Sicily, Roman coins of Marcus Aurelius and Medieval Hungarian issues" would love to buy a coin or two for himself from this piece of Britain's archaeological heritage. I wonder how long the association of that coin with both Peter Tompa and the From Hoard will survive as it then passes from one ephemeral collection to another, as we have seen, most US coin dealers can rarely even give the name of the previous owner and source let alone the previous four or five, it is 'traditional" we are told for provenance to become discarded for "such items" as coins (Guy Rothwell says its traditional for everything to lose provenance).

Fortunately if the public purse can stump up the money for yet another group of artefacts needlessly hoiked out from below the level of plough damage, these coins will not be made available for a Washington collector to gloat over in his back room. According to the PAS website which apparently Tompa has not bothered to read, Stephen Minnitt, Head of Museums at Somerset County Council, said: "This is a find of great national importance and we are determined to raise the sum to acquire the hoard for public benefit. Hopefully it will be able to go on display in the new Museum of Somerset when it re-opens in 2011”".

It seems to me that this passage on ACCG Board member Tompa's blog reveals, once again, the scale of the density of these collectors who praise the "benefits of the British and Welsh approach to handling common artifacts like coins [...] the wisdom of the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme" without actually knowing the first thing about how it works. Also of course as we see above, confusing the one with the other. Tompa is on the Board of Directors of the ACCG, which has produced its wikipedia-led "paper" 'Coin Collectors and Cultural Property Nationalism' on precisely the "benefits of the British and Welsh approach to handling common artifacts like coins" and "the wisdom of the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme" which was presented of all places the Newcastle CBA Conference on Portable Antiquities. Frankly, there could not be a better demonstration of the intellectual bankrupcy of the "collectors' rights" lobby than what they say about artefact hunting and collecting in the UK.