Circulating coins and MOUs: taking account of the evidence

Professor Nathan Elkins has written an important post "Import Restrictions and Coins: Lobbying, Duplicity, and Ancient Egypt's Closed Currency System" (May 14, 2014). He notes that while archaeologists stress the importance of including coins in MOUs, coin collectors do not.

I should declare an interest in the topic as I published a short study of the Ptolemaic coins linked to Arsinoe in the Peloponnese (further information here).

Comments

Cultural Property Observer said…

Thank you for your interest and recognition that Ptolemaic coins circulated outside the confines of modern day Egypt. For more, see http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2014/05/duplicitous-coin-collectors-no-comment.html

17 May 2014 at 15:46

Nathan Elkins said…

I don't think CPO read your article, David. Clearly you talk about coins struck at the mint at Arsinoe (Methana) in the Peloponnese, not Ptolemaic coins struck in what is modern Egypt!

Those coins from Arsinoe will have been protected already by the Greek MOU. The potential MOU with Egypt would protect coins struck in what is now modern Egypt and which are found in what is now Egypt.

17 May 2014 at 21:57

David Gill said…

Dear Peter
I am sure that you would agree that the coins of Arsinoe-in-the-Peloponnese (Methana) would be covered by the MOU with Greece.
For the details of that MOU see here.

17 May 2014 at 22:29

The scale of the returns to Italy

I have been busy working on an overview, "Returning Archaeological Objects to Italy". The scale of the returns to Italy from North American collections and galleries is staggering: in excess of 350 objects. This is clearly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the material that has surfaced on the market without a history that can be traced back to the period before 1970.

I will provide more information in due course, but the researcher is a reminder that we need to take due diligence seriously when it comes to making acquisitions.

Stele returns to Greece

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture has announced (Saturday 8 September 2018) that a stele that had been due to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London in June 2017 has been returned to Greece (Friday 7 September 2018). The identification had been made by Cambridge-based forensic archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis.

It appeared that the stele had been supplied with a falsified history as its presence with Becchina until 1990 contradicted the published sale catalogue entry. It then moved into the hands of George Ortiz.

A year ago it was suggested that Sotheby's should contact the Greek authorities. Those negotiations appear to have concluded successfully.

The 4th century BC stele fragment, with the personal name, Hestiaios, will be displayed in the Epigraphic Museum in Athens. It appears to have come from a cemetery in Attica.

"Beating sites to death"

Policy decisions for protecting archaeological sites need to be informed by carefully argued positions based on data. Dr Sam Hardy has produced an important study, “Metal detecting for cultural objects until ‘there is nothing left’: The potential and limits of digital data, netnographic data and market data for analysis”. Arts 7, 3 (2018) [online]. This builds on Hardy's earlier research.

Readers should note Hardy's conclusion about his findings: "they corroborate the detecting community’s own perception that they are ‘beat[ing these sites] to death’".

Pieterjan Deckers, Andres Dobat, Natasha Ferguson, Stijn Heeren, Michael Lewis, and Suzie Thomas may wish to reflect on whether or not their own position is endangering the finite archaeological record.

Abstract
This methodological study assesses the potential for automatically generated data, netnographic data and market data on metal-detecting to advance cultural property criminology. The method comprises the analysi…