the CAMPVS

Hoards, Hobbyists, and History

I’m sure by now many of you have heard the news about the 52,000 coin hoard found in Britain by using a metal detector.  For my part, I’d like to thank Patrick Callahan of Fordham for drawing the story to my attention.  A rather thorough article on the find can be found here.  Like many who are discussing this story, I want to draw attention to the integrity of Dave Crisp, who when he realized as he dug that he had found a substantial find, reported it to the authorities.  The hoard was then able to be excavated by professionals who may consequently be able to learn much about the little-understood 3rd c. AD in Britain, when Carausius usurped power and began to mint coins under his name at the London mint.  He was quite busy at this during his 7 years in power, as you can see by browsing his page at Wildwinds.com.

Debates flair up occasionally but passionately about whether coins ought to be included in trade and sale bans, as in the Cypriot ban of 2007, discussed by me here.  Soon after the ban, several coin collecting organizations sued the State Department for details about the decision.  This New York Times article says of the ban, “It was the first time the government had barred trade in a broad category of ancient coins, and collectors and dealers were surprised. Archaeologists, who often use coins to help them date finds, supported that ban on the grounds that treasure hunters using metal detectors to search for coins frequently damage significant sites.”   Mr. Crisp proves that “treasure hunters using metal detectors” can be a valuable ally for archaeological discovery, provided that they report their finds appropriately.   Articles on the the story all suggest that he will be rewarded financially for his discovery, splitting the reward with the owner of the land on which the coins were found.  This is an incentive for those who may think they would only profit from a similar discovery through private sale (as on eBay, where a quick search turns up many ancient coins claimed to be from British hoards).  Along with his financial gain (and even without it), Dave Crisp has a small place in the annals of archaeological discovery, which is pretty cool in its own right.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Classicists on Twitter, I can now link to some more great information on the hoard.  Constantina Katsari (c_katsari) linked to this great article on the hoard, with details about the excavation and the coins found therein, and this link includes tons of pictures.    Terrence Lockyer (TLockyer) tweeted this BBC interview video on the hoard.  While I’m on the subject of twitter, the Campvs’s own Dennis is on Twitter (dmmch), and his tweets include links to new blog posts.

George Grote on myth and allegory

There’s a lot to be learned from texts that might seem out of date, and while it seems odd to say that to anyone interested in ancient texts, it’s easy to forget that the latest scholarship isn’t necessarily the most instructive. I think that one of the greatest obstacles to the past is the ever-increasing wall of interpretation and with it the endless branching of every field into a thousand specialties.

Classics of history and scholarship endure, despite—and in part because of—the criticism and revision they inspire (think of Gibbon), but equally instructive is the way in which classics help you to see how others see things.

George Grote produced such a classic in his History of Greece (1846–1856), and from the start his method is clear and his reason is sound, at least on a topic that frustrates many students and produces mountains of useless conjecture. Here he is on legends regarding the gods:

I maintain, moreover, fully, the character of these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience. Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and Dream), are Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo. To resolve them into mere allegories, is unsafe and unprofitable: we then depart from the point of view of the original hearers, without acquiring any consistent or philosophical point of view of our own. For although some of the attributes and actions ascribed to these persons are often explicable by allegory the whole series and system of them never are so: the theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that, after one or two simple and obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures. The allegorical persons and attributes are always found mingled with other persons and attributes not allegorical; but the two classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march of the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us to such a necessity be considered as admissible.

Would that Robert Graves (and many others since) had felt the same.