32p a Coin. Telling the UK Public About "Roman Archaeology" from Private Collections

Another addition to the PAS "fifty finds dumbdown" stable. Anon: Review – Andrew Brown, '50 Finds of Roman Coinage: objects from the Portable Antiquities Scheme', Amberley Publishing, Current Archaeology February 27, 2021.

Roman coins make up "almost a quarter of the whole PAS dataset". Roman nails hardly figure at all.

Apparently this book is "succinct and engaging". 

[It's probably got a lot of pretty pictures of round pieces of metal with pictures on them divorced from their context, some dot distribution maps and I'm going to guess, like all PAS archaeo-fluff, refers throughout to what we know of the Roman world from written sources that the coins illustrate and inferences drawn from what the pictures on these objects show. Yes? Sixteen quid to find out how many times "archaeological context" is mentioned in it, and whether the PAS educate the public this time about why ripping them out of sites is damaging (Valletta Convention Art. 9)].

Hat tip David Gill