A person spends years, often a lifetime, developing a skill that earns them a living—and more. What do they do with the “more”? They use it to entertain themselves. Many of those who succeed in a capitalist society are the sort of people who are interested in things like art, history, philosophy and the “social sciences”. Why? Because they are intelligent, educated, inquisitive and because these subjects are usually a diversion from what they do every day. They are naturally more inclined to these disciplines than to the latest societal fad. The vast majority of people in the world who have discretionary income fall into this category.

Some people choose to follow the path of academia, and they “entertain” themselves with the same pleasures as those in the private sector. The difference is only that in the academic world it is not “kosher” to own, while in the private sector ownership is perceived as an inalienable right. Does this mean that the academic world and the private world are really worlds apart? Hardly. It merely means that the age-old conflicts of human want and need are confronted. What is new about that? By what standard is the steward of society’s interests better than the member of society whose interests are supposedly being served?

For centuries, private and public scholarship have had a symbiotic relationship—especially in numismatics. That relationship was a constant proof that private and public interests can exist, prosperously, in harmony. In the 1970s, the situation began to change and the symbiosis was fractured by a surge of territorial dominance within the archaeological community. This escalated into a zealous crusade among archaeological organizations to eliminate private parties (independent scholars) from the “congregation”. The discrimination against “non-certified” scholars became epidemic and grew to such a fanatical height that the archaeological community ostracized even its own members who would cooperate with the “heathen” masses. Scholarship for the sake of learning became scholarship for the sake of controlling.

Any rational and thinking person must, on serious reflection, be able to see that what happened to archaeology over the past several decades has been a disaster of the greatest magnitude—not just for that discipline but for the whole of humanity. Today, we are told that the public is not qualified to inquire, not ordained to protect nor empowered to preserve the past. Is that the society that we have created? Is a government that supports that sort of mentality a government “of the people, by the people and for the people?” It sounds more like some of the experiments in governing that failed in the 20th century.

It is time that serious archaeologists took a stand and reclaimed their discipline from the brink of destruction—before the prestige earned by their predecessors is blackened by universal and eternal enmity.

Used with Permission from the Ancient Coin Collecting Blog 

According to Merriam-Webster:

schol·ar, pronunciation: \’skä-l?r\ is:

1: a person who attends a school or studies under a teacher: pupil.
2 a: a person who has done advanced study in a special field
b: a learned person.
3: a holder of a scholarship.

By this definition, the list of scholars throughout recorded history is extensive. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest continuously operating degree granting institution in the world is the University of Al-Qarawiyyin (Arabic: ????? ?????????) founded in AD 859 at Fes, Morocco.

From that time on, there has been a distinction between institution affiliated scholars and independent scholars. In some fields, the distinction is subtle and the degree of cooperation between institutional scholars and independent scholars is such that one could hardly distinguish the two. That was indeed the case during the formative years of the discipline we call archaeology. As institutional archaeology grew, the resource did not. Consequently, intense competition developed within and between these institutions for the access necessary to legitimize and sustain departments and the associated hierarchy of administrators, teachers and students.

Over time, cooperation with non-affiliated scholars became problematic as it spread the limited resource even further. Out of this, came a pervasive attitude of protectionism that to the rest of the world was perceived as academic elitism. During the latter half of the 20th Century, while cooperation between institutional scholars and independent scholars flourished in most other disciplines, a gulf emerged between these two groups of scholars in the area of cultural property. The codification of institutional views in the UNESCO convention of 1970 marked a turning point in the study of ancient cultures. (more…)

After reading a recent post by Nathan Elkins on the American Numismatic Society discussion list, I had serious concerns that I might be suffering from a severe case of delusion or dementia. Mr. Elkins proposes to orchestrate a panel of archaeologists to discuss “Contextual Numismatics” at the 2009 AIA meeting.

Granted, I have only been a professional numismatist for 41 years, but I rather thought that I might have heard most of the terminology used in the field. So, I hopped over to that repository of all human knowledge, Google, and searched for the term—hoping to bring myself up to speed. Ouch, not a single hit.

Just to make sure my browser was working, I searched for something everyone has heard of “Ilkhanid Coins”. Bingo, 648 links. Ok, one more “Russian wire money”, 489 more links. Contextual Numismatics? — Zip. This, I thought, ought to be a lively discussion panel. Perhaps I was unfair to search a general resource for an academic term. So, back to the browser I went and pulled up the American Numismatic Society web site. Searching for “contextual numismatics” I found zero documents. Finally, I tried the Archaeological Institute of America web site: “Your search yielded 0 results.”

The term is apparently unknown to anyone but Mr. Elkins. It should be interesting to see how the discussion goes when the subject is undefined and unknown. (more…)