Competing Values in Archaeological Heritage by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319941028
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

These same values of the market can appear also with regard to other object types, for example, broken or partial objects, which naturally achieve lower market prices and are initially less likely to be reported than complete objects. In particular these influences and presumptions can be seen also with finder’s interactions with mediaeval and later coinage, one of the more common artefact categories that is reported as treasure trove but which also has a significant presence upon the antiquities market. At the time of writing, metal detecting is becoming increasingly useful at recovering modified mediaeval and early modern coins, either those that have been pierced for use as jewellery or those that have been bent in half, most likely as a religious offering (Kelleher 2012). Although the Treasure Trove Unit is now seeing an increase in reporting pierced coins, it became apparent finders were not reporting them as they perceived them to be ‘damaged’ and thus not of interest. At the same time, it became clear that finders were often straightening coins that had been bent, restoring them to a state that the antiquities market would find more attractive, before reporting them.

These influences are worth considering in detail; in one case the market assessment of pierced coins as ‘damaged’ meant that they were not reported, while on the other hand, bent coins that were perceived as ‘damaged’ were ‘improved’ in a manner that would make them acceptable to the market, at the same time removing their archaeological significance and making a significant category of objects invisible amongst the mediaeval coinage regularly reported.

There are other ways too in which it metal-detector users demonstrate their own active cultural engagement towards the objects they find. It has been the author’s experience that they often have alternative names for archaeological finds, for example, ‘spectacle buckles’ for the common seventeenth-century double-loop buckles that are a signature artefact of postmedieval archaeology (Fig. 6.2). Finders too often have their own beliefs about how to date an object, for example, the colour and ‘depth’ of the patina on an artefact is commonly believed to show how old an object is; this too can have an effect on whether an artefact is reported. At the same time, much archaeological language such as ‘site’ and ‘context’ has been readily integrated into metal detecting vocabulary but given different meanings, readily allowing for another layer of miscomprehension (Campbell 2013).

Fig. 6.2Archaeological finds such as this seventeenth-century buckle are often categorised under different names and types by metal-detector users, in this case a ‘spectacle buckle’

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