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In a post presciently entitled "Forever Dumb?", US coiney Sayles says all coins are antiquities, therefore all antiquities must be coins. He then advances artefact-centred arguments which pretends dugup artefacts are not ever dug out of the archaeological record, so therefore determining on the basis of a proper collecting history which artefacts on the market are freshly clandestinely excavated and which are not has "no purpose" (I suppose for a coin dealer who sees coins primarily as something they sell to make money, it is even an awkward consideration).
Sometimes one wonders whether such stuff is created by a genuinely unrepentantly ignorant and unreflexive writer caught up in a dialogue of the deaf of his own making, or whether it is deliberately crafted to mislead (unrepentantly ignorant and unreflexive) others - ie other coineys - to create the conditions for that dialogue of the deaf in order to perpetuate the no-questions-asked market. Read it yourselves with that question in mind.
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6 comments:
wow! where do I even start with that one?
Quite deliberately aimed at convincing customers that buying unprovenanced coins is harmless I'd say.
The simple statement "Knowing that they were found at a specific site tells us practically nothing"
...would no doubt be taken by customers as "tells us nothing about the COIN" whereas of course it can tell us everything about the SITE.
It's a BFO (Big Fib by Omission) and without it business wouldn't be booming would it? Properly informed collectors, other than ones without consciences, wouldn't be buying unprovenanced stock would they?
You can hear similar stuff in East End markets any day of the week, No-one was harmed in the sourcing of these trainers, honest Gov!
;)
coins do have a mint mark so we do know were they originated from and they were in circulation so he has a point in some ways.the archaeological context of the find is allways helpfull but a coin is not "dumb"and can tell us alot on its own.antiquities are a different kettle of fish alltogeather.its hard enough having provenance for an antiquitie never mind say a roman denarius that is worth just a few pounds.unfortunately the provenance just does not exist.
kyri
Ummm...
Kyri the problem is that the notion of "antiquities" still less archaeological material does not begin and end (as Sayles suggests in the article mentioned) with coins.
He seems to think (or want others to think) the debate about artefact collecting is only directed towards coins. that just shows how out of touch the guy is.
mintmarks are neither here nor there, archaeological sites and contexts are destroyed to get artefacts of all types (that includes coins) out and THAT IS THE PROBLEM !
Yes, coins are easy, for the dullards. They have names, places and dates stamped on them, and pictures too. They are what we call addressed sources. I am not sure however that this makes them "not dumb" if you look at history holistically. Take the coins of the USA for example and write a history of that nation using JUST the words and pictures on those coins and no external (non-source based) information. I say you can't do it. I have actually challenged the coineys to have a go as an intellectual exercise, but its not an idea they took up.
Could you do it on the basis of GB coinage since 1776? Kings and queens, yes - are the two World Wars (for example) visible in Britain's numismatic evidence?
the point is that coins ALONE give a highly limited outlook on history, and in getting them out of the ground so much is destroyed which gives a better chance to appreciate so much more. All so a few coineys can fondle a Mark Anthony and see what Hadrian's nose looked like from the side.
paul,you make some good points,coins do provide a VERY limited outlook on history but they are not totally dumb as you can gleen some important information from the coin,the king/queen general of the time,the gods they worshiped,many ancient coins were struck to celebrate a victory or treaty,to say they are dumb is not strictly true and to say "the mint mark is neither hear nor there",well come on paul you know thats not true.everytime i see a coin come out of the ground on time team or any other archaeological programe,first they look for which emperor than the mint mark.i cant agree with the term "dumb"a greek pot on a mantlepiece might be "dumb"as the information without the archaeological context is very limited,but a coin tells us just that little bit more.
kyri.
ps,i love your injection of humour,but you have to understand that these "coineys" love their coins so fondling them comes naturally.
kyri.
We are getting off the topic which is that a bitter and confused old man living on a mountain says that ARTEFACTS are "not dumb" because coins have writing and pictures on them, and being insulting about people who say that archaeological context is important.
But there is a post deep down in the early layers of this blog (you can probably find it by searching "Wroxeter") which shows that a coin that a detectorist would shove in the bulk lot bag as a "Roman grot" without a second thought was the key terminus post quem for an entire stratigraphical sequence - one crucial for understanding what happened at the end of the Roman period in western Britain. If that coin had been ripped out so Sayles could sell it from his Missouri mountaintop internet shop, we'd have been unable to understand a unique chunk of British history. Gone forever. So what HAS been lost so Sayles can sell? Well, nobody knows, and from articles like this, it looks like Sayles and his mates do not understand even the slightest where the problem is, nor are concerned enough to find out. So they are fighting against what they do not understand.
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