Reading Coin Finds

E3　—　Statistics in the soil

A mass of coins buried together in one deposit is called a hoard. A hoard is not simply treasure. It is an accidental specimen of the money circulating in that place on that day. Someone buried it and could not dig it up again, and so it survived untouched. English pennies are found in greater numbers in Sweden than at home — the reality of payment, told by the coins.

Supervised by: Mitsuru Hayama　／　Reading time (main text): About 8 min (4,143 characters of text at 500 chars/min; exercises and readings not included)　／　Beyond the text: 11 exercises · 6 coins · 11 readings · 1 references

What this course teaches you to do

• You can separate what a hoard can tell you from what it cannot.
• You can explain what the "newest coin" in the composition table means.
• You can point out concretely that a hoard is a biased sample.
• When asking why it was buried, you can judge that sometimes no answer is available.
• Can state what each major hoard discovery rewrote.
• Can explain the model for interpreting the extent of trade from the distribution of finds, and its limitations.

Lessons (8)

1. Draw up the composition table firstDraw the composition table. What is broad in it decides what that hoard can speak about.
2. The newest piece is the clockThe newest piece fixes the date (no earlier than). The oldest piece shows how long coins stayed in use.
3. A hoard is a biased sampleWhat survives is what the owner could not come back for. Ages rich in hoards are ages when people could not return.
4. Leave the unanswerable question unansweredObjects tell you what, how many and until when. Why it was buried may be beyond knowing.
5. Jars That Rewrote Scholarship — Three Great DiscoveriesGreat discoveries happen by chance. But what turns them into a science is the procedure of counting and recording the number of coins.
6. Find-Spot Maps are Trade Maps — Silver That Went NorthCoins speak through their find spots. When many are found outside their country of origin, it indicates a flow of silver.
7. Excavated as a Whole Workshop — The Dawn of AsukaikeNot only coins, but also moulds, crucibles, and unfinished pieces were found. The excavation of the production site changed the terms of the debate.
8. Discrepancies Between Records and Archaeology — Gold and Silver from the RuinsThe numbers in documents and the objects excavated from the ground only become historical sources when they are collated. The discrepancy itself is information.

Readings (11)

• The age of picking coin　Japan　the end of the 14th century / 1968　Shinori, Ezo
  The source of §1, §2 and §4. The composition of Shinoridate, and the questions that get no answer.
• Feudalism and the coin of the Vikings　France　the beginning of the 10th century　The bank of the River Ribble, northwest England
  §1. A hoard mixing coins of six cultural spheres. Note the hedge "not all of it need be tribute."
• The silver of Massalia　France　the end of the 6th century BC–the 5th century BC　An olive grove at Auriol, Provence
  §1. Weights scattered from 0.15 g to 2.75 g. The look of things before a standard settles.
• When temples were banks　Japan　the Middle Ages　Yuigahama, Kamakura
  §4. The six coins of the crossing. Look at the phrasing "that is precisely what is being investigated now."
• The usurper's mint　Britain　the 3rd century, found in 2010　The fields of Somerset
  Section 5. A silent ledger, counted down to the exact number of fifty-two thousand, five hundred and three coins.
• The Danegeld　Britain　the end of the 10th century–the 11th century　Scandinavia
  Section 6. More of the king's pennies in Nordic soil than in their home country—the flow of silver as told by find-spot maps.
• The Jinshin War　Japan　the later 7th century　The Asukaike Workshop Site
  Section 7. "The day the textbooks were rewritten." Read the original account of the excavation of an entire mint.
• The price of the realm　Japan　1615–1616　Osaka and Kunozan
  Section 8. A case study of conflicting numbers in historical records, and reservations about legends of buried treasure.
• The Sea Turtle Silver Coin　Greece　Circa 550 BC (disputed)　In front of the coin hoard pot
  The start date, which had relied on literary tradition, was pushed back by evidence from the ground. Please observe the methodology where the context of burial—what an object was buried with—becomes a tool for dating.
• The imperial system　Italy　the 1st–2nd centuries　An imperial road
  The story of Roman coins found on the coast of India comes with an important caveat. The sentence states that what remains in the ground are not the coins that were used, but rather the coins that could not be retrieved.
• Gold Coins Buried in the South　India　1st–3rd Centuries　Archaeology and Texts
  The places where things are found are also the places where people have looked. This is a passage for considering both possibilities: whether a skewed distribution reflects a bias from that time, or a bias in modern research.

Assessment

11 exercises in this course (7 check, 0 compare, 4 written). Progress is recorded by self-assessment.

References

• EMC / SCBI — Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds ／ Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles — The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge / The British Academy　Individual records of excavated and found coins. EMC covers c. 12,000 finds from 410–1180, SCBI c. 46,000 coins in collections. Also includes a list of hoards.

Only works and primary sources whose existence has been verified are listed.