Chew Valley Hoard: Time for Some Trite Narrativisation to Claim "Relevance"

Telling the public stories

Archaeologists are not very good at explaining what they do, why they do it and how they are (they think) 'relevant', so they fall back on platitudes (Orsner) and trite narrativisation. The same goes for coineys. The Guardian report on the Chew Valley Hoard has two silly examples in the same text, and they want you to pay for 'serious journalism' (Mark Brown, 'Huge hoard of Norman coins reveals medieval tax scam' Wed 28 Aug 2019)

The first is this tax evasion trope.  

Gareth Williams, the museum’s curator of early medieval coinage, said the hoard of 2,528 coins was unusually large and “massively important” in shining light on the history of the period.

What he actually means is not actually the hoard and its 'grounded context', for it has none, but the loose coins - this is Dave Welsh/Wayne Sayles heap-of-coins-on-a-table numismatics. No more, no less. Since the coins were not properly recovered, we do not even know if this was one deposit or three. But to return to the loose coins:

Three of the coins have been identified as “mules”, a combination of two types of coin – essentially an early form of tax-dodging by the moneyer, the person who made them.

That's it. Ex cathedra pronouncement, tug yer forelocks plebs. To understand why, you'd have to go back to a British Numismatic journal article of 1929/30 (Brooke, George Cyril 1929/30, 'Quando moneta vertebatur: The Change of Coin Types in the Eleventh Century; Its Bearing on Mules and Overstrikes’, BNJ 20, 1929–30, 105–16 at 105–8). It is not clear what evidential weight can be placed on just three coins in a group of more than 2500 of them, and actually the behaviour of individual minters does not really mean as much in the debate the coiney thinks these little discs of metal with pictures and writing on them will resolve: “One of the big debates amongst historians is the extent to which there was continuity or change, both in the years immediately after the conquest and across a longer period” change in what? I think there are a couple of dozen things that were more fundamental to understanding this period than how long John of Northwick (or whoever) carried on using a type VIId die in his workshop, or whether he used them only on Fridays when he knew the King's official would be dining with the Abbot.

The other one bit of narrativisation is related to Boris Johnson and Brexit in the news today as the PM prorogated Parliament

One of the most tantalising questions is why someone would bury so much money. Williams said the south-west of England was a violent place in the aftermath of 1066, with raids by the Welsh and the return of Harold’s sons from Ireland. “Imagine a period of instability with someone in charge of the country that not everybody actively supports and uncertainty in terms of the relationship with the continent,” he said. “It is the sort of circumstances in which anyone might choose to bury their money.”

if anyone sees Mr Williams striding across the BM forecourt with a spade in one hand and a big canvas bag in the other, you'll know what he's doing. Mind the cables. But don't treat us all as idiots. 


Reference:  Charles E. Orser, Jr., 'Negotiating our 'familiar' pasts', pp 273-85 [in:] Sarah Tarlow and Susie West (eds) 1999, The familiar past? : archaeologies of later historical Britain', London ; New York : Routledge.