Back in December I wrote concerning an important find by a metal detectorist. Well, in going through my daily news feed I saw a post by Peter Tompa on his blog Cultural Property Observer which points out that this discovery was publicized by the Archaeological Institute of America in their journal Archaeology.
Of course, the resident heckler Paul Barford had to have his say and criticized my blog post: “As an archaeologist I would say that is potentially more important to our knowledge of the historical processes of this complex period than a mere king-list. Northumbria at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries had many ‘kings’, in the tenth it was to have many more, but what social processes lie behind this procession of names, the shifting of power-blocks delimited by the nice broad lines on the historian’s maps? That some bloke called Airdeconut struck a coin (with a p.c. Christian monogram on the reverse) is good news fodder and may be exciting to coineys, but hardly advances our knowledge of the processes operating on the rest of society. This of course will not be known while all we have are a couple of hundred bits of metal hoiked [sic] out of the ground here and there and no context to put them in.”
As pointed out by Tompa: “Though the circumstances of the coin’s discovery are only briefly mentioned and the fact that it was reported under the Treasure Act is not mentioned at all, it is interesting that the AIA’s Magazine is publicising the discovery of an artifact not found in professional archaeological excavations, and under a system of cultural preservation that has been criticised by elements within the archaeological community.”
If not for the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme this fantastic discovery would most likely have never seen the light of day.
Hopefully reason will prevail one day and realistic solutions will be found for the very real issues which affect the preservation of our past. Among these, encouraging the reporting of finds via a fair system in source countries (such as the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme), the proper cataloguing and storage of finds and the financial crisis which archaeology faces.
