Digging Up and Dispersing Another Decontextualised Hoard

                     At the sale                    

In the Guardian's 'Life and style' section is an article ' Experience: I found a hoard of 161 Roman coins in one weekend' ( Fri 3 Jun 2022) tekkie Robert Abbott a Canvey Island computer shop owner who has been detecting fairly intensively since 1990 talks about getting out in "in our beautiful countryside with my friends Mick and Dave". They found a coin hoard (161 4th century issues) and dug it up themselves in a single weekend "it was a detector’s (sic) dream". The article described his "experience" - "As told to Anna Derrig", who seems to have had no questions about the effects on the historical environment of these three blokes just taking a spade to the 1,600-year old archaeological record on this site. I think the Guardian mainly is concerned to write about "looting" having taken place when its a group of three brown-skinned oriental gentlemen named Baram, Sidi and Cameldriver Hamid doing it in a country 'over there' outside White Man's England. Anyway, back among the white men, it's all OK:

In September 2020, Dave, Mick and I went on a camping detecting weekend in Pewsey [...] Within half an hour we had found around 15 to 18 coins between us [...] As we were digging until quite late, we drove down the road for a takeaway to celebrate [...] We found 161 coins over the weekend. [...] I was gobsmacked when 142 of the coins made £81,160 – double the estimate – at Noonans’ auction last month. The farmer will get half and our share is about £13,000 each. The British Museum wants two coins, and we’ll keep a couple for ourselves.

Just to show that they are "not in it for the money" but just want a little bit of history for themselves. It is 163 kilonmetres from Canvey Island to Pewsey which rather precludes any detailed research ascertaining the context of this find.

See also 'Detectorists rake it in as hoard of more than 150 Roman coins dating back to 340 AD sells for £100,000 at auction - more than twice the expected price' Mail 17 May 2022

Auction Central (LiveAuctioneers), 'Hoard of Roman silver coins hammers for $101K at Noonans' June 1, 2022.