Review of Elkins on "Why coins matter"

Nathan Elkins'—"Why coins matter"—is touted as a "special feature" on the web site of Saving Antiquities for Everyone (http://www.savingantiquities.org/feature.php). Mr. Elkins, in what can only be described as a tyro condemnation of the ancient coin market, stitches together a series of disjointed and unrelated points that leave the reader struggling for a thread. His arguments, in the best of cases, lack plausibility. More often, they are incoherent.

A bold sidebar anchors the lead-in with the bizarre quote: "We cannot think that ancient coins are less significant than looted Greek vases..." Elkins suggests that archaeological context trumps any other value of an object. This thinking is merely a precurser to the irrationality that follows. Supremacy of context is of course the trite and time worn position of radical archaeologists that has all but faded into obscurity since cultural property nationalists began screaming for repatriations. If context is the most significant aspect of an artifact, then the location of any artifact once it is out of the ground is really irrelevant. Why should Italy or Greece, for example, care where an object is stored today if its "archaeological" context is unknown? The obvious answer is that cultural property nationalists do NOT value context over possession, nor do a host of other interest groups including museums and collectors. Even archaeologists seem hung up on possession. Every suggestion that surplus common artifacts from a dig be sold to collectors is quickly rejected even though the objects have all been recorded and studied and are sometimes even earmarked for destruction. The supremacy of context is an argument whose day has come and gone. Yes, coins are important when found in an archaeological context. They are equally important without any context whatever, as any experienced and knowledgeable numismatist knows.

The word "trafficking" appears prominently in the Elkins article as a sub rosa suggestion that trade in coins without "documentation" is illegal. It is not illegal, never has been and probably never will be. He uses the advertising hyperbole of an eBay dealer (a great resource) to substantiate the supposedly huge flow of looted material coming into the ancient coin market. He even posts a screen shot of the dealer's web site with a photo of a pile of uncleaned slugs. By the dealer's account, 170,000 of these have been sold in the past two years. If that is true, which may or may not be the case, it proves one thing. There are tons of junk ancient coins scattered across Europe from one end to the other. Note that Mr. Elkins didn't rail against the hundreds of thousands of ancient Chinese coins sold for export without "documentation" to tourists by the state owned Bank of China. Yes, the government supposedly requesting restrictions was actually the seller of these "illicit" coins. That didn't stop SAFE or the AIA from advocating import restrictions on these coins, and in fact they still do. In the past three years alone, metal detectorists in Britain found and reported more than 28,000 coins, most of which went to the legal trade. A few were acquired by museums. That count does not include the more common occasional finds of a coin or two per outing which are not reportable under British law. One doesn't need a metal detector to find coins, many of them lay on the surface and are easily spotted after a rain. Thousands of children from impoverished families in third world countries routinely scavenge farm fields and vacant lots picking these up and saving them to sell to any passerby who will buy them. It's not surprising that many end up on eBay. Realistically, no rational person would get concerned about the dredges shown in the eBay screen shot. To suggest that anyone would destroy an archaeological site to find this kind of trash is ludicrous and clearly alarmist. To suggest that these coins are as significant as Greek vases sounds like a skit from Comedy Central.

Sandwiched into a perfunctory overview of the history of ancient coin collecting, Elkins relates his personal experience as a coin collector (shades of Colin Renfrew) and a description of his epiphany and conversion to the field of archaeology. Of course he fails to mention in this rambling historical summary that "documentation" was never required of collectors nor especially valued by collectors through the ages. Therefore, it normally did not exist. The "Market Snapshot" presented by Mr. Elkins is misleading at best. The often quoted comment of Eric McFadden in Minerva magazine (1993) is trotted out once more as some sort of proof that the market is inherently illicit. If Mr. Elkins had properly researched the situation he would know that the market of 1993 was an anomaly in the ancient coin trade. During the post WWII years of repressive governments in Eastern Europe, any ancient coins found in the normal course of life's events were hidden away. The accumulation was substantial. When the iron curtain fell and the governments of these countries struggled with adaptation into a new world economy, old coins were the last thing on anyone's mind. A huge amount of material flowed freely into western Europe at that time. This was not the result of any great increase in searching for coins, it was the release of a pent up supply that had no market for four decades. Today, contrary to the claims of Mr. Elkins, we see relatively little material on the market that one might consider "fresh". There are literally millions of ancient coins that have been circulating between collections for centuries. To offhandedly discount the presence of this huge body of material is grossly irresponsible.

Mr. Elkins presents a meaningless summary of the ancient coin market to show that it is a "multi-million dollar industry". That is hardly a surprise. There are sport and entertainment personalities in this country that individually make more money per year than the entire ancient coin market generates. Stanford archaeologist Michael Shanks pegs the "illicit antiquities market" at four and a half to five billion dollars per year. If this is true, and who could disprove his claim, the entire coin market must then by comparison be insignificant (maybe one percent?). Does Elkins claim that ALL coins on the market are illicit? I would hope not. If illicit coins actually make up far less than 1 percent of the supposed illicit market for antiquities, why is there such a vigorous attack against them? Maybe it is because ancient coin collectors and the associated market seem vulnerable. If billions of dollars worth of antiquities are still flowing freely, even after all of the import restrictions that have been imposed, perhaps import restrictions are not a solution to the problem.

Elkins bemoans the fact that a high percentage of coins sold in the U.S. market do not have "documentation". That is no surprise either. It is not required. Why should anyone bother with it? His presumption that "undocumented" means "illicit" is a huge leap and a perversion of the American legal system where innocence is presumed. It makes a moral judgment that is nothing less than insulting. Oddly, he uses a detention of coins in Germany to condemn the U.S. market, claiming that they were headed this way. These coins, being "illegally" exported from Bulgaria were said to be in the possession of a person previously arrested for smuggling antiquities. Mr. Elkins points out that the person arrested had ties to high-ranking politicians. What he does not say is that the high ranking politicians were Bulgarian, not American, and reportedly included a family member of the smuggler who was a cabinet level minister in the Bulgarian government.

One long section of the Elkins article attempts to show that archaeologists really do appreciate coins beyond their value in context. This is in glaring contrast to the "context is king" philosophy that is touted elsewhere in the article. The argument is not well articulated, nor is it believable coming from Mr. Elkins.

A section titled "Common Misconceptions" is well named. It is Elkins however who labors under the misconceptions. He uses data from Roman settlement excavations in Germany to show that hoards are found in populated areas (archaeological sites). That data is not surprising. Romans in this region were forced for mutual protection to live in settlements as opposed to being dispersed. Naturally any hoards found there would be within a settlement. Actually, many of these types of hoards are found in the context of private mints on fortified sites. Elkins cites several cases of coins supposedly being looted from archaeological sites, but says nothing about site security or prosecution of violators. Instead, he naively blames the market for not insisting on "documentation" that would in his view end all looting.

In a section titled "Ethics and ancient coin collecting", Elkins refers to the "old scholar-collector tradition", implying that scholars and collectors are now mutually exclusive. He characterizes ancient coin collecting as unethical, saying "Although ancient coin collecting has a long historical precedent, not all practices accepted in humanity's past are still considered 'ethical'." He compares coin collecting to the ivory trade that endangered African Elephants. He calls on collectors to "force" dealers to abandon their "self interests" and for collectors to volunteer to work on archaeological sites instead of buying coins.

This rather disappointing polemic was apparently three years in the making. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of Mr. Elkins does not move us closer to a solution.