Hooker on Why Ancient Coin "Numismatics" is not an Academic Discipline

Heavy handed hooker

Readers of this blog will know that I have long been questioning the assertions of those involved in the  no-questions-asked commerce in ancient coins (ie decontextualised archaeological artefacts) that to regulate this trade in order to reduce out the possibilities of fresh illcitly-obtained material circulating on the market would in some way damage the discipline these people claim to be involved in. A discipline (see here, here, here and here for example) which they assert adds a great deal to our knowledge of the past (citing construction of Parthian ruler lists as one achievement) and which professional researchers have no time for, making the contributions of avocational scholars of the discipline more valuable and worth encouraging rather than regulating. They claim that in a heap of decontextualised coins on a table there is some magical "numismatic context", which it is important to preserve because archaeologists allegedly in some way destroy it ('Preserving Numismatic Context from Destruction by Archaeologists') . This is in some way linked with die link studies, without which there can allegedly be no numismatics.

So far so good. But then does 'spot the difference' picture-matching of a heap of loose coins of unknown origins on a table  (like Mr Snible's alleged die link here and revisited as a result of my comment here) actually merit the label of 'discipline'? Is there a bona fide discipline which can function using data which are derived from evidence primarily of unknown origin and potentially including that which is of illegal and unethical origin?

Readers will know that I have questioned this a number of times and never received a satisfactory answer from those engaged in or benefiting from this shady commerce. In particular I have had little success getting references to anything looking like a textbook of this discipline, defining its methods, assumptions and theories.

It seems to me that for something to be a 'discipline' (the name itself meaning it follows certain rules or norms) it has to be a branch of learning or scholarly instruction with its own rules and methods. One defining character of an academic discipline is that it would offer career paths for scholars, and here universities, validating suitability for individuals to  professionally engage in academic careers, are at the core of the question of disciplinarity. Here the fact that even coin collectors and dealer stress that numismatics is taught as a separate subject in relatively few universities (rather than as part of another discipline such as archaeology, classics or art history) is not without importance.

In broader terms however a discipline would be comprised of a community of scholars with similar research interests, engaged in one particular area of study and sharing the same heuristic assumptions and epistemological concepts (central concepts, facts/empirical knowledge, organizing theories), and a certain amount of agreement on the methods (i.e. research traditions) they embrace to build up a body of knowledge, and providing a forum for sharing research and insights through established channels, including a recognized body of specialist literature.

Can this be said of the amateur 'heap-of-loose-coins-of-unknown-origins' study? Well, apparently not. The 'Ancient Coin Collectors' (sic) Guild' back in July 2004 said they were going to 'establish a far reaching program of public education, through public media, to highlight the accomplishments of private collectors and their contributions to our knowledge and understanding of the past'. It has never actually done that, suggesting that in fact the task is not too easy and less effective as a tool than was initially considered. Meanwhile it was precisely the ACCG that was engaged in serial dodging of my requests for some of their thoughts on the epistemology and methodology of 'heap-of-loose-coins-of-unknown-origins' coin study.

Now Canadian coiney John Hooker has tried to get them off the hook, in a digression to his next turgid and wayward blog post in the series "The La Tène religion of the Celtic elite" ('part 14: The classification problem). This starts off by discussing the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning (with a neat little chart for people who never did it at school - most metal detectorists I guess). He then waffles on about inductive reasoning:

[Sherlock] Holmes was not trying to find general scientific principles, he was looking at clues to discover "who did it". Sometimes, he would demonstrate this method by telling someone whom he had just met, quite a lot about themselves and their recent history. His theories were not general, they were specific. This is the way that the best numismatists work ― by looking at the series of coins that interests them and not by trying to come up with some general numismatic theories that can be applied willy-nilly to all coins of all times and places.

The point about Holmes is wrong. The interpretation of the material traces and evidence to which Hooker refers cannot be done in isolation (out of context). That context into which they have to be fitted for them to be the basis of any kind of interpretation is precisely patterns of human behaviour and their material correlates.  In 'The Sign of Four', we find the fictional detective boasting:

I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand and first.

It is only in terms of being material correlates of a past action, which in turn is part of a whole series of behavioural and cultural interactions - of which an underlying assumption is that in general they will fall into patterns - that we consider that we can use observed material facts or traits as evidence on which basis we can reach an interpretation of the past. This is in fact precisely the foundation of Hooker's own interpretation of the typology of Coriosolite coins to which he eternally returns in his blogging, whatever the topic.

Hooker therefore wills us to believe that there can be no underlying theories and assumptions to  'heap-of-loose-coins-of-unknown-origins numismatics' because 'the best numismatists' concentrate on empirical observations of trivial details of the pictures and writing on coins, without any attempt to apply 'some general numismatic theories that can be applied willy-nilly to all coins of all times and places'. This study is portrayed by him as taking place in some anarchistic atheoretical vacuum in which 'anything goes'.

What makes archaeology a discipline (and making 'cables' of undigested 'facts' à la Von Daniken not), is the validation of the interpretations by recognition that they fall into acknowledged and definable research traditions. Those traditions can change, and should change; phrenology is no longer considered a mainstream discipline. In the same way I think that until coineys can show otherwise (which they have not yet done by any means) we can dismiss the notion that 'heap-of-loose-coins-of-unknown-origins' coin fondling is any kind of academic discipline, especially with the rise of other areas of the study of dugup numismata (such as the applied numismatics written about by Philippa Walton of Oxford University and others, or the contextual numismatics developed in several European academic centres, not to mention the achievements of the entire Polish school which seems to have escaped North American coineys' notice because they are not keeping up with the academic literature).