More Reported Finds Mysteriously Go Missing

What the actual ***k is going on in the UK? First we have the disappearance of some papyri from a university storeroom, then some treasure finds deposited in a northern Museum were found to have gone missing. There are suspects in both cases, but no charges seem to be be being pressed (like Boris's Partygate jaunts) and here's another for the catalogue of shame (Liam Coleman, 'Mystery as missing Roman hoard coins replaced by more valuable artefacts' Metro 18.07.2023)

Three ancient Roman coins found in Cornwall were taken and bizarrely replaced with artefacts that are more valuable, an inquest has heard. The 56 coins, part of what is now known as the Lanivet Hoard, were discovered during four digs from newly ploughed fields in Lanivet between October 2017 and January 2020. Members of the Mid Cornwall History Hunters group, who were metal detecting with permission from the landowner, made the discovery and reported the haul to Cornwall’s finds officer at the time. A treasure inquest held in Truro yesterday heard how since the coins were initially photographed, three of them had been taken – only to be replaced with different coins that are even more valuable [...] three of the coins from the original find in October 2017 were missing and had not been reported as treasure finds. Instead, they were substituted with other Roman silver coins from the same period that were similar in appearance. Ms Tyacke said the discrepancy arose when the original photographs of the first batch of 23 coins did not match up with the coins that were sent to the British Museum for identification and dating. Ms Tyacke added: ‘The substitute coins looked similar to those found but are actually in a better condition and are more valuable than those they were swapped in for. The substitution does not make sense.’ She told the inquest that the missing coins from the original dig have never been found [...] Ms Tyacke added: ‘The police were involved, who interviewed some of the people involved. But as it was someone’s word against another it was difficult to lead to a conclusion as no further evidence was found. ‘It’s all quite suspect but we couldn’t take it any further.’.

Eh? Taken by whom? Oddly, in the hoard of coins from the timespan of Nero to Caracalla contained "one silver Greek drachma, which was a Roman province at the time, dated to the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian was found". That's interesting, but because the PAS has not actually bust a gut getting online its records of coins found between 2017 and 2020 (despite there being a pandemic lockdown in which they could have caught up on such things), the public cannot use the database as intended - to find out about things like this. According to the roundup of gawpworthy metal detected stuff for 2020 in Britannia, "the drachm was of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) issued in Amisus". Hmm. Amisus is not in "Greece" but on the Pontic coast of what is now Turkey. And it is interesting to see a provincial coin of this date apparently coming from a real archaeological context. 

 As for who pinched the rest, could be a collector involved somehow in handling these coins that already had a load of other denarii from another hoard (declared or not?) and needed the three from the new find to fill gaps in their own collection, so they swapped them round. The "value" here in neither here nor there. Just a guess, but this hints at the lackadaisical way finds are treated by artefact hunters and others, and in the case of the former, who knows how many times things have been messed about with before they were reported and photographed? Metal detecting finds cannot be trusted as archaeological data.