Just about the time I was ready to give up on the AIA altogether, out of the wilderness (if you can call Washington DC the wilderness - and some might) came a blinding flash of light. Perhaps I should preface my following comments by pointing out that to me, light is the precursor of truth. Some readers of this blog might remember that in 2004 I chose "Per Lucem ad Veritatem" as the motto for the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild. The guild has tried to live by those words in the face of very dark forces in which light and truth are anathema. Among the 500 or so respondents to the U.S. State Department call for comment on a proposed Memorandum of Understanding with Bulgaria was one AIA member who spoke clearly with an enlightened understanding of the situation on the ground and an obvious concern for truth.
This gentleman, Gerard Casale, is a current member of the Board of Directors of the Washington DC Society (George Washington University) of the Archaeological Institute of America. Mr. Casale submitted a comment to CPAC through the public online comment system and said: "Ancient coins from mints in what is now Bulgaria are both common and usually very inexpensive. This means that tens or hundreds of thousands of these coins existing in collections around the world have never have been through an auction or other transaction where precise provenance has been recorded. Nor is it vital to the interests of scholarship inside Bulgaria that such provenance be demanded now. Regulations at 26 USC Section 2601 (2). provided that for an artifact to be restricted under the CPIA, it must be of both archaeological interest and cultural significance. These coins exist in many multiples, already well represented in Bulgarian state collections and are therefore not of cultural significance within the meaning of the rule. Since ancient coins circulated widely beyond the borders of modern Bulgaria, even in ancient times, one cannot assume that all coins of Bulgarian types, “were first discovered in” Bulgaria, as required by the CPIA. (26 USC Section 2601 (2) (c).) Less severe remedies must be considered before import restrictions are placed on Bulgarian coins."
Indeed, this is a very nice summary of the points that the ACCG and Numismatic Trade have made regarding not only coins from Bulgaria but from virtually all source countries that produced coins in antiquity. I personally have talked with other AIA members who express the same sentiments but are frankly afraid to make those views known publicly for fear of professional reprisals -- and have been told that without equivocation. In this environment, the statement of Mr. Casale is not only a ray of light, it is a very brave appeal for reason. I sincerely hope that it does not come back to haunt him.
My own academic background is in Art History and that discipline is linked very closely in many universities to the Departments of Archaeology and Anthropology. One of my program advisors as a Graduate Student at the University of Wisconsin was at that time an editor of the American Journal of Archaeology. I was, in fact, a card-carrying member of the AIA and proudly so at the time. I attended many local chapter meetings in Madison and took Archaeology 101 as an elective. In fact, that's where I first learned about Historical Particularism, which I later came to view as the downfall of Archaeology as a respected profession. The Franz Boas theory was a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. That focus on the tail, is what has eventually led to the sorry state of affairs that we are burdened with today where "archaeological context" trumps everything else in life. It's refreshing to find a member of the AIA who can look past that nonsense and see the light of truth.
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