A blog on the SAFE Corner takes aim at the ACCG and its officers. Below is a response to that attack.

In his blog post “Can Cultural Property Legislation Kill an Academic Discipline?” (13 Sep 2007) Nathan Elkins boldly attacks a discipline that he evidently does not understand. Numismatics evolved as a science over many centuries, through the cooperative effort of independent and professional scholars. The views of Mr. Elkins seem to miss the whole point of this symbiotic relationship. The first words of the Elkins post are designed to cast independent and institutional scholars as having different interests. He singles out the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG) and its officers as opponents of cultural property protection and asks rhetorically and tongue in cheek, whether cultural property legislation can kill numismatics as an academic discipline. Numismatics is not an “academic discipline” but rather a science that embraces all who nurture it.

It is first necessary to correct a misconception under which Mr. Elkins labors. As founder and Executive Director of the ACCG, I can say with unequivocal assuredness that the guild does not oppose cultural property protection. In fact, our mission is very clearly stated in our guild bylaws. That is, we seek to “promote and nurture the free and independent collecting of coins from antiquity.” That is our sole purpose. The bylaws also state that “The guild does not in any way support, condone or defend the looting of designated archaeological sites, nor the violation of any nation’s laws concerning the import or export of antiquities. ” The ACCG has never taken any action that would lead to or condone the destruction of cultural property. Contrary to Mr. Elkins’ claim, it is not our aim, nor has it ever been, to hinder the protection of cultural property. It is our aim to preserve the freedom of private ownership. We simply demand fair treatment for coin collectors and dealers from government bureaucracies, here and abroad.

In that respect, we are particularly concerned about “import restrictions” that effectively impose unrealistic, unfair burdens of proof onto collectors and dealers, to prove the negative – i.e. that a particular coin was either not first found in the ground in its source country, or that it left that country before import restrictions went into effect. We also advocate that source countries should investigate fair and well thought out systems like Britain’s Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme, which have proven to be far more effective in encouraging locals to report their finds than reliance on draconian legal strictures to punish people who find coins, particularly on their own land. It is not fair or reasonable to blame and burden coin collectors and dealers for problems that really originate in misguided, ineffective, inadequately enforced antiquities laws in source countries.

Mr. Elkins observes that the majority of ACCG officers, benefactors and patrons are coin dealers, implying that this is a “bad” thing. What he may not understand is that coin collecting is an avocation. Most people who collect coins have real jobs that require real commitments. It is only natural that professional numismatists (those who make a living as such) will be the most likely and logical people to invest the time required to lead an advocacy group. If one examines the list of officers in the ACCG, one will find that it is really quite a widely recognized group with extraordinary achievements and worldwide acclaim for their contributions to numismatics. That acclaim does not come merely from collectors, but from academia as well. Still, the ACCG is a collector organization and its officers and supporters are primarily collectors above all. The vast majority of ancient coin dealers were collectors long before they became professionals and many still maintain their private collections. More than 1,100 individuals used the ACCG fax service to comment on the Cyprus request for import restrictions. These were clearly not all coin dealers.

It is ironic that Mr. Elkins quotes the Martin Beckmann article of 1998 in The Celator regarding the antiquities trade. As founder and publisher/editor of that periodical, I personally accepted the Beckmann article and indeed typeset it myself. I didn’t see a conflict of interest then and I don’t now. The fact that finding coins in an archaeological context tells us something is undeniable. The suggestion that coins which cannot be linked to a specific context are of little or lesser value is simply uninformed. This “context rules” mentality is a modern vogue that stems from the Historical Particularism of Franz Boas. It certainly is not universally accepted, even within the archaeological community. The contribution of numismatics to history, art history, economics, philosophy, religion, astronomy, biology and a host of other disciplines far surpasses the meager information provided by the context in which a coin is found. Useful? Yes. Desirable? Yes. Of paramount importance? No.

Claims to the contrary are usually due to a poor understanding of numismatics in general. Or, they may in some cases be an attempted rationale for controlling coins—reviving the dictum “Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.” Since this point was raised, let’s re-examine Morgantina. It took some 30 years for the results of the initial excavation to be published and nothing has been updated in the past 15 years. Although a strong proponent of import restrictions on coins, Professor Malcolm Bell recently admitted in responding to a Freedom of Information Act request that he had “no written or electronic communications regarding Greek and Roman coins found at Morgantina since January 1, 1999. In contrast to the glacial pace of academic publication, I venture to say that new information about Sicilian coins would echo through the collector community faster than a speeding bullet. Collectors can look for The Celator without fail each month and learn about all sorts of new discoveries and works in progress. How many excavation reports come out each year, and of these how many mention coins? Better question: who reads them or even knows about them? The answer is of course, other archaeologists. Is there not something wrong with that picture?

Another misconception under which Mr. Elkins labors is the view that collectors consider all archaeologists lacking in numismatic knowledge. Actually, several ancient coin dealers have degrees in archaeology. At least two of them have doctorates in archaeology, one with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. At least ten archaeologists are dues paying members of the ACCG. All of these people are serious and very competent numismatists. There are a number of archaeologists working as curators of institutional collections of coins. There are archaeologists on the Board of Trustees of the American Numismatic Society. There are also archaeologists like John Boardman who work in fields other than “excavation archaeology”. Professor Boardman is a strong advocate for private collecting. I could go on. There are a number of archaeologists who know a LOT about ancient coins. However, few if any of these archaeologists are opposed to the private collecting of ancient coins. That opposition comes from a different breed.

Mr. Elkins asks whether private collecting is necessary to assure continued excellence in numismatic scholarship. The short answer is yes, but the question is really obscuring the point. Is numismatic scholarship the only reason to collect? Of course not. People collect for all sorts of reasons and not all become scholars. Should they not collect? Joseph Alsop in “The Rare Art Traditions” argues convincingly that man has been collecting since he lived in caves. It is a natural and instinctive human trait, indeed an important facet of human culture. Some believe it is a right. Should some things be preserved by states or institutions? Absolutely. Legitimately rare and endangered objects or species should of course be protected.

By Mr. Elkins own statistics, if one person tried to move 340,000 coins across a border in a short period of time, coins cannot be rare or endangered. I do have to wonder though how someone managed to strip all these coins from an archaeological site. Every excavation report that I have ever read, and that is quite a few, lists a few or maybe in some cases a few hundred coins. In fact, there are millions upon millions of common ancient coins scattered all over the civilized world. These coins are perfectly licit, have been in collections for hundreds of years, and have never needed documentation of any kind. The call to begin documenting individual coins now is absurd. Is the anti-collecting movement really about preservation? Perhaps it is really about control. Ah, that ageless human foible. Who will control our access to the past and thereby the scholarship that goes with it?

Finally, Mr. Elkins states that the unchecked trade in undocumented ancient coins is a severe problem. Is it the trade that is the problem, or is it instead misguided laws and the lack of law enforcement on archaeological sites? Should we put barriers on our freeways because people speed? Mr. Elkins would have more controls, more regulation, more restriction. That is a typical bureaucratic approach to solving a perceived, and in this case imperfectly understood, problem. I will continue to disagree.

Related posts:

1. Review of Elkins on “Why coins matter”
2. ACCG Benefit Auction Planned
3. The ACCG Benefit Auction nets $45,811 in active bidding.
4. Coin Collectors to Challenge State Department on Import Restrictions
5. Ancient Coin Collectors Influence Expands
6. A Time to Speak Out – Will Ancient Coins from Italy be Restricted?
7. FOIA Suit Filed Against US Dept of State
8. The “illicit” antiquities trade
9. Ancient Coin Collectors Challenge U.S. State Dept. Bureaucrats After Baltimore Seizure
10. Contextual Numismatics?