Detectorist discovers important hanging-bowl escutcheon

Medieval enameled hanging-bowl escutcheon, 6 - 7th Century AD
(click to enlarge)
photo: Portable Antiquities Scheme

"Littlehampton man’s find stuns British Museum"

Reader's of this blog will know that I am not very impressed with the hype one sees in archaeological reporting, so when I saw the above headline in the Littlehampton Gazette my first reaction was a sarcastic thought. That soon changed when I saw the photograph and realized that "stuns" might even be understatement. Thankfully, no paramedics had to be called to apply the paddles to any of the British Museum staff. Compare this example with what is in the British Museum.

I do know that staff at the British Museum have been stunned before: over my brooch from Champagne (better than anything in the B.M.'s Morel Collection), and over the fact that an export permit had been granted for my Plastic Style finial because its true identity and importance had not been recognized at first, and especially when a friend had shown them an uncancelled and genuine reverse die of a Henry II Tealby penny that had been found in the Thames and that he had inherited from a brother of H. G. Wells. I mean, they are only human.

The excitement started as soon as Tyndall Jones showed it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme's Field Liaison Officer (FLO), Sephanie Smith who did a truly excellent job of recording it in the PAS database. I am more of a stickler for proper cataloging than anyone I have met, and I would be proud to have done such a good job. Here's a tip: When you catalogue in this fashion, you will understand much more about the object than by just studying it.

Hanging-bowl escutcheons are a bit of a mystery: they can be called Celtic or Anglo-Saxon but their genesis remains unknown. No prototypical workshop has been located and some are of the opinion that it might be in Ireland. The latter might alleviate one of the problems that I have with this style being called Celtic, and that is that I can find no unbroken continuity of styles between the pre-Roman early Celtic art and the early Medieval. Ireland, at least, was never Romanized. There appears to be no Irish continuity either as no enamel work at all has been found there dating from the second to fourth centuries AD. I know enough about art to understand that a culture cannot put break in an art for a couple of centuries and then resume its evolution as if nothing had happened. The knowledge of the art lives in a brain which was trained in it by those with experience, and not though some sort of Lamarckian genetic inheritance.

Although this period is far from my specialty, allow me the following little hypothesis: style is frequently identified by its design elements and motifs, but less through its composition. When we have an art that is decorative and not figurative and it uses a lot of curved lines, the meeting of two or more curved lines, whether drawn freehand or by compass can create certain geometric shapes that we find pleasing. The reason for this pleasure comes from the unconscious which, according to Jung, at a level deeper than that of the dream state, has an apparent fondness for numbers and geometry. Thus cultures with no connections can manifest the same geometry, especially if they are the sort of culture that places importance in the magical, visionary, or inward-looking (the mandala, too, is an unconscious symbol).

When most people, today, hear the word "tribal", they think of a style of tattoo. So let's go with that: I have selected some nineteenth century photographic and artistic records of New Zealand Maori tattoos (click all to enlarge). I picked early tattoos because more recent tattoos could be influenced by the modern tattoo fad. Look at them and notice the same design elements and motifs that you can see in early Celtic art and in the so-called Medieval Celtic art. However, the composition insists that other motifs be included, too, such as the encircling lines around the mouth and the curved radiating lines in two opposed registers on the forehead. Sure, we can see cusps, interlocking spirals, and broken-back curves, but apart from a few elements, the composition finds no Celtic parallel. The similarities are expressions of the collective unconscious which is not restricted by space or by time.

Tukukino

Maori man with a tattoed face

Barnet Burns with Maori tattoo

King Tawhiao Potatau Te Wherowhero

Got milk?

photo: Stefan Kühn

Today's post is a short one as it is going to get rather hot today so Tristan's visit to the dog park will be early this morning. As a follow up to yesterday's post "Well-travelled ancients", Denmark is making more genetic discoveries. This one is revealing that lactose tolerance in northern Europe is much later than was originally thought and it also confirms that our ancestors were, indeed, well-travelled.

All that I am waiting for now is for British archaeologists to reveal the nature of the secret force field that somehow kept the Celts from entering Britain while it appears that they and many other people were moving all over the neighbourhood.

Nebra Sky Disc
photo: Dbachmann

The article also refers to the Nebra Sky Disc which contains British tin. The trade agreements over this metal would have set up relationships which would have lasted a very long time and such trading concerns would also have impacted on the patterns of fosterage and distant marriages. Everything is connected.

Well-travelled ancients

Travellers at rest.
Pieter van Laer (1599–after 1641)

There is an underlying perception in archaeology that people did not travel very far. Some genetic tests have seemed to indicate that the relatives of people who lived hundreds, even thousands of years ago, are still living in the same neighbourhood. I suppose there is something to that if we confine ourselves to averages, to the centre of the bell-curve. By the same sort of reckoning, we all have an IQ of 100 so it is very doubtful that anything so complex and counter-intuitive as quantum mechanics will ever be discovered. Just a minute, something must be wrong with that statement...

Of course, we do know that some people travelled very great distances: the movements of Genghis Khan's armies are often measured in degrees of longtitude and lattitude instead of kilometers, and the United States would not exist at all were it not for pioneers from Europe. Roman and Greek empires stretched over three continents. So perhaps we really believe that apart from historically important events, we generally stay put.

So when the Gundestrup cauldron was discovered in a bog in Denmark and it was realized that its workmanship was Thracian and some of its subject matter was Celtic, an explanation was required that would be a comfortable fit for our sensibilities. So what historical fact could allow for Denmark, Thrace and Celtic imagery in the same scenario? The wanderings of the Cimbri of course. After all, ordinary people like artists and artisans did not change history and led mostly uneventful lives in the 'hood. The Scordisci tribe were recruited as supplying the Celtic iconography because they were adjacent to Thrace and the Cimbri supplied the remaining criteria.

It is always tempting to associate discovered objects with known historical events. I do it myself quite frequently. It often works, but sometimes things can go wrong. A lot depends on our assumptions and the degree of evidence that we require to confirm our ideas. I have noticed that when a theory is of the "this will rewrite history!" variety, the amount of supporting evidence required is far less than for something quite mundane. This is why we have confidence tricksters, we really want to believe in "get rich quick schemes". It is possible for a small investment to turn into millions very quickly, think about lotteries. Perhaps it is my time. The confidence trickster can spot that attitude at a hundred paces.

When Anders Berquist and Timothy Taylor said of the Gundestrup cauldron: "How Thracian silversmiths occupied themselves in the interval between the late 4th and late 2nd/early 1st centuries BC is unclear." They were restricted in their dating by the Cimbri hypothesis. The latter was so tempting that saying something like "As the style predates the Cimbri's journey, this event cannot have been a factor" could be softened to allow for it to be proven through other means. But that is a slippery slope and the other evidence was also allowed some inconsistencies to make for a better fit. Again, there is nothing wrong with this approach as most archaeological evidence is fragmentary, anyway. Thus an inscription to King Mithridates on one piece of supporting evidence was considered to refer to Mithridates VI of Pontus whose dates tarry with the Cimbri, instead of Mithridates II of Commagene which I think far more likely.  I am confident that there was a Thracian revival in the time of Augustus, and the Stara Zagora phalera (which is compared with Gundestrup cauldron) belongs to this movement (Hooker, forthcoming). Its style has some important differences between both the earlier native Thracian styles and the more classical Sicilian-inspired art which followed it. The native style on the Gundestrup cauldron is typical for the earlier native Thracian style, though. My own dating range for the Gundestrup cauldron is sometime during the last three quarters of the 3rd century BC. and it was most likely made before 250 BC.

Now we have another Danish find that proves that people did indeed travel great distances in antiquity without having an important event to justify it: The remains of a Bronze Age girl long assumed to have been Danish was actually from the Black Forest in Germany.

Frugal archaeology

Funding to the arts takes a nose dive whenever the economy is suffering. It is not difficult to understand why: at such times more people are more worried about the basics of food and shelter than what they see as a luxury. Yet, the arts make up quite a large portion of the economy as you could easily see by staying for the credits after the movie.

Archaeologists, when threatened with cutbacks, are quick to point out that archaeology brings tourists and they bring their money. Rarely is the cost of supporting added tourism mentioned in such accounts, but tourists need parking spaces, accommodation and good roads to take them to such attractions, and the attractions feel the need for expensive interpretive centres to attract even more tourists. How long would it take to make back the money spent on such a project? I have never seen this matter discussed at all.

The professional call is always for more funding and it does not seem to be too sympathetic towards lean spending in lean times. This is hardly surprising: ask anyone if they think they should have more money. I have yet to see any suggestions about limiting the amounts of grants to better reflect real costs. Some years ago, a museum in England got about ₤40K to build an online database of their collections. With that money, someone bought a database application for the job which cost less than ₤1,000 and then they imported their catalogue files and the software constructed the web application at the click of a mouse. When my wife and I generated the web pages for the Celtic Coin Index online or resampled and added the photos, it was the software which did all the work after a couple of mouse clicks and we did not even have to be there at the time. Most of our work was in designing and building the applications. When I saw the museum's final product, I noticed that they had left the software's logo on each page (this was a "placeholder" in the software that was supposed to be replaced with the logos of the company who purchased the software). Perhaps there were other expenses I could not imagine besides the cost of the software and perhaps half a day's actual labour for one person, but I could not see how a grant of ₤40K could be justified. Some grants are structured so that a portion of the amount can go to the institution's coffers without any need to justify its spending.

A lot of money has been spent in the UK buying hoards of coins or artifacts under the Treasure Act. In times past, such hoards were mostly released to the market with museums retaining only what was needed in their collections. Nowadays, artifacts have been fetishized. Entire hoards are retained as display objects even though the public could only really see only a small part of the hoard. The past had been made "sacred" and there is little differences between an exhibit in a museum and some saint's relic in a church in that respect.

Britain is more fortunate than some other countries in that independent, amateur archaeology is permitted. Some professional archaeologists like to give the impression that the amateur lacks proper qualifications for the task, but many amateurs are retired professionals, anyway. They also give good training to those of their numbers who have had no previous experience. When reading such criticisms, one has to ask if their motive might be more personal, something more like a turf war over income than the desire to have things properly recorded.

So pay attention to the complaints. Do they simply demand more money, or are there suggestions about how to reduce the expenses of archaeology through the granting of an appropriate amount for the task and the use of unpaid, but expert, work done only for the love of the subject? Make sure that the foxes are not guarding the hen house.

Canadian animation seeks museum

Not Canadian, but Eadweard Muybridge would have to be
included in a museum of animation.

"For years, 600 boxes of animation cels and other materials have been hidden away in boxes, and moved several times from place to place." Elaine Della-Mattia, Sault Star.

In this time of economic woes, museums have been suffering. Not considered essential by most people, museums are increasingly resorting to the deaccession of some of their holdings just to stay competitive. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, the task is even greater. They have an animation collection that was appraised at about $11 million in 2009, but it has no museum at all. A museum might cost about $8 million, but that is a tall order for a town with a population only about 75,000.

Yet, a world class animation museum would not only bring in tourist dollars, but it would express the fact that Canada has been important in the history of animation since the time of Oscar winner Norman McLaren who was a pioneer in animation technique. But would this already be a world class collection? The two news reports linked here mention three parcels of material from Canadian productions. That is perfectly acceptable providing there is other material present that shows the history of animation and Canadian content should certainly be emphasized in a Canadian museum.

Personally, I would contact the award-winning Canadian animator, Richard Reeves who had attended Sault College of Applied Arts & Technology in Sault Ste. Marie. Following and innovating on the traditions of Norman McLaren, Richard would have much to advise about the foundation of such a museum. My wife was an animator and introduced me to Richard. We visited him when he was living on a small island of the British Columbia coast and had a great time there (apart from when I fell in an abandoned well while I was picking peaches). Here is one of his best known animated shorts, hand drawn on film (including the sound track).

Another notable Canadian animator died in 2013: Frédéric Back beat Norman McLaren by earning two Oscars and being nominated for two more. I met him only once when he brought the following Oscar winning animated film to Calgary's Quickdraw Animation Society, The Man who Planted Trees:

I wish Sault Ste. Marie the very best of luck in getting an animation museum. Canada really should have one. I also hope you liked the movies (sorry there was no popcorn).

Early Celtic bracelet fragment

Early Celtic bronze bracelet fragment, continental, late 4th-3rd cent. BC, 64 mm.

Time for another piece from my collection. This time it is an unprovenanced continental
Celtic bracelet fragment retaining the female side of the "clasp". The other side is about the same.

It is unusual in that each "bead" part of the cast design is flattened on the front, back and sides which makes the "clasp" opening an oval with straight sides. It appears to have been modified after casting as the ring edging the interior side of the clasp is slightly flattened on the top and bottom. Also, most bracelets of the general type are not fully "in the round" like this one on the interior edge that would be in contact with the skin. Instead, their interiors are somewhat flat.

The closest parallel is Jacobsthal 247 from Waldalgesheim (late 4th century BC) which has bas-relief decorated "beads".

Have a great weekend.

How to be a terrorist victim

Demonstration against ISIS in Hanover last year
photo: Bernd Schwabe in Hannover

It has been about forty years since I was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Services operative (ex Canadian Intelligence, the equivalent of the British MI5). I volunteered for this work after I learned of a planned terrorist attack in Calgary that had targeted three downtown office buildings for bomb attacks. People commonly tell me about their problems, and I commonly try to help them. Sometimes, my help does nothing at all: three women have approached me with stories of spousal abuse but, despite my best efforts, I could nothing for any of them. The first time, I thought I had made a difference. The woman I worked with told me she was going to move out that very day, but she didn't, and the following morning she arrived at work with a fresh bruise on her face. I was really disappointed in myself. I was a teenager. What did I know?

So when a workmate told me that he had been invited to join a terrorist cell, I knew that any help I gave could not be just for him. Sure, I think I could have easily talked him out of it. He already had serious doubts, that's why he came to me. But what would it matter if I prevented the creation of another terrorist? There would be plenty more lining up to take his place. I realized that I would have to betray his trust and, after he left, I made a phone call to someone who would know who to contact.

The would-be terrorists were all Métis, a distinctive cultural group who had been politically active for a few years hoping for better representation. Genetically, they are a mix of European and First Nations people and their culture originated in the seventeenth century. The leader of the terrorist group was not Métis at all, but I did not know that at the time, neither did my workmate.

I got a phone call after lunch. The conversation started like this:

"Hello?"

"What time do you get off work?" the man's voice asked.

"Four-thirty" I replied.

"I'll meet you in the parking lot then, I'm driving a ...".

At no point did he give his name, nor who he worked for, nor what the phone call was really about. He didn't have to.

In the car, he flashed his badge and told me his rank and name and that the purpose of the RCMP Security Services was to guard against the Communist infiltration of Canada. He explained to me, as we started to go for a drive nowhere in particular, that as an SS agent he could never come into physical contact with anyone whom they were investigating and that such contact was only made via operatives. As the RCMP SS had been getting some bad press around that time, he addressed that problem too. He explained that were you to route a foreign agent through the Canadian justice system, several new agents would have replaced him or her before there was even a preliminary hearing. They did things their own way and it was the only practical way to operate. This was nothing new to me and I sympathized with him about the situation. Just over ten years after this, the SS was no more, being replaced by a civilian agency who would follow the letter of the law. Nowadays, they still call in the RCMP for "tricky cases" but not much is said about that...

He explained to me that the Métis terrorist group would have been started by a Communist agent, most likely KGB. Part of the Soviet organization would send agents to places where minority groups could be convinced to fight against perceived injustices through terrorist acts. He said that the real purpose was not in the creation of violence, but to spread fear and dissent, "to break the backbone of the country" as he put it. The KGB had no interest at all in any minority groups problems, such groups were nothing but cannon-fodder to them.

So I volunteered and over the next few weeks reported to various agents, meeting at a different restaurant each time to pass on my information. Once, the same agent told me that if my cover became blown, I could offer my workmate police protection in return for any information. This surprised me: "You would really do that? I asked incredulously, "Of course not!" he laughed. There was another agent who reminded me of the TV police detective Columbo, just as rumpled, he looked as if he shopped at the Salvation Army, and acted as if he was not even listening, but he never missed anything and would ask me about something I had said earlier using verbatim quotes. Although my own role was minor, and they must have recruited many more operatives, the terrorists were scattered and their explosives were captured (2,000 lbs of explosives in a shed just outside town). My workmate never joined the terrorists, I just had him ask his recruiter various things to "help him make up his mind". I was relieved not to have had to offer him the fictional police protection.

The terrorist threat never became public knowledge. It was a completely successful mission: no one had been terrorized at all. Most terrorists are dupes who start out as idealists. What they are really fighting for is not what they think it is.

Whenever you hear about a terrorist attack, you are also hearing about about a government with an inefficient intelligence network, or a government that is using foreign terrorism to propagate their own "domestic terrorism" in order to reduce their own citizen's freedoms. Reporters make almost as good dupes as idealists. Think about it. If there was no demonstration, or if the demonstration was not reported, then ISIS would have been very disappointed.

What really saved the German Muslim's demonstrations came from an unusual source:

"The campaign was welcomed by the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann. 

""It is good that Muslim associations are putting up a fight against the terrorism of fanatical Islamists," Graumann told Deutsche Welle."

Well done, Dieter Graumann, ISIS must have really hated that response. That their actions brought Muslims and Jews together was not something they wanted at all.

I am not giving you weekly reports of the ISIS destruction of archaeological sites, nor am I trying to convince you not to buy any Syrian antiquities because they might be looted from such sites. To do so is to play into terrorists hands, to become a dupe. They want you to be indignant, upset, and to obsess on what they are doing. That is why they are doing it. If you can make collecting such things "politically incorrect", then you can be sure that studies of such things and their cultures will diminish. That is exactly what ISIS wants. Certain archaeologists, by acting as if all antiquities are sacred, are playing into the iconoclastic belief structure of ISIS (perhaps this dogma was picked by ISIS as the time was just right for it). Not only that, but these same archaeologists are making people wonder if they care more about ruins than the people who live near them, so it is a double bonus for ISIS.

That's all I'm saying about the subject. I do not want to promote terrorism any more than this. Refuse to be a victim.

Robert Van Arsdell articles on Kentish potin

Cantii potin Van Arsdell 108-3

Robert Van Arsdell has just uploaded the second of two very interesting articles on the Kentish potins:

Van Arsdell 2015c, 'Could Kent Kings Cast Coins? 1: the slippery slope of inference'

Van Arsdell 2015d, 'Could Kent Kings Cast Coins? 2: something you don't normally see'

Sometimes, it's not the metal that is most interesting, but what is found in it.

Tomorrow, I'm only going to say this once.

Catching up on the news

Town crier, Llanrwst, Wales, ca. 1875

The problem with posting a long and uninterrupted series like the last one is that any other news gets ignored. Most often, the news is not that important, or it is something public that is reported elsewhere, anyway. This time, though, a few personal events have been missed, so I'll catch up here.

I ran out of cheques yesterday, so I'm going to my bank this morning to get some printed up. As a news event, this might seem really minor, but the Federal government has finally decided that I am in Canada legally, and thus they will be paying me a retirement pension after all. So quite a few thousand landed in my bank account to cover the back payments of about eight months and my first regular payment was also just deposited. So after I have finished at the bank, I will be taking a cheque over to one of the Alberta Works offices to pay back my loans from them. Of all the Provincial government departments, Alberta Works is the most horrible. Their staff commonly treats people like criminals, are rude, unhelpful and barely know what they are doing. My "case worker" started off by denying that the Province loans money to cover the sometimes very slow Federal pension process, even though the contract of the loan was signed in that office only a week earlier. They also expect you to live so far below the poverty line until your pensions are caught up, that anyone without the support of friends and family might be in danger of losing their current residence or face malnutrition. "Alberta Works" is an Orwellian euphemism for welfare, and that seniors waiting for the slow federal government to start paying their pension have already officially complained at being poorly treated by such people and have demanded that their issues go to a department that knows something of senior's concerns. I am convinced that my own worker has some "issues" that are partly relieved by bullying as many of her clients as is possible. I cannot remember encountering a nastier person in many years. Some people like to kick other people when they are down. You know the type.

So I paid off the personal loans as soon as my money appeared in my account, but it took several phone calls before Alberta Works finally sent me my invoice for their loan. The good thing about all of this is the "forced savings" that it imposed. I now have a greater surplus in my account than usual and I have yet to get my Provincial pensions and their backlog payment. One of their employees told me that would only take about three weeks. We will see. Especially good is the fact that as a pensioner, my income will actually go up quite a bit. Mind you, the tax man will try to lessen my pleasure over that fact next year. I will still end up with more, but just how much more is still a mystery. I'll put a bit aside for that.

I have almost no interest in politics and I don't even follow the news. I saw a lot of Provincial election posters so I knew of that event, and my daughter had also told me that the New Democratic Party (socialist) was gaining in popularity. But when a friend told me, over some sushi one evening, that the NDP had won the Provincial election, I thought he was joking, but I could not understand the humour. I then discovered what had happened to oust the Conservatives from their unbroken 44 year rule. I had actually personally given Peter Lougheed, the conservative politician who ended the Social Credit party's rule from 1935 to 1971, one of his issues (overturning the Alberta Eugenics laws). The Conservative party had split, and some of them had formed a really extreme right wing party. You know, the sort of people who feel that if you are suffering from anything at all, then God must be punishing you. Undoubtedly, the party is full of people who thought the world was created in 4004 BC. Most Albertans were willing to sacrifice their conservatism to make sure such people would not get into power so the conservative vote was split just enough to ensure a socialist victory. Besides, after 44 years, the conservatives had become somewhat imperious and were not listening to the people. Alberta had always been the conservative stronghold in Canada. Times change.

On the "supernatural front", the strange coincidences surrounding the dekadrachm of Syracuse that had been in my collection have continued: the millionaire who had bought it has now sold off his Greek collection and the dekadrachm was purchased by my friend who had brought the book on Syracuse dekadrachms with him to visit me and I had picked the one that I liked most (actually getting that exceedingly rare variety not long afterward) He had instigated the events that led to me buying the seven thousand dollar coin for about 5% of its value and to thus have been able clear up all of my debts after my wife died. My friend buying the dekadrachm was one of those "poetically correct" events.


And with everything else, spring arrived while I was writing the last series. I had been waiting for its first sign. Would it be the song of the American robin? the first flower appearing on a fruit tree? No such luck. It was a mosquito landing on my arm (it beat the robin by five days).

The Iceni hypothesis — part 32

Ramparts on the NE side of Warham Fort
photo: Richard Law (Geograph)

Most people don't think about hillforts in Norfolk, or even hills for that matter.The few Norfolk hillforts such as Warham Fort (or Warham Camp) illustrated on the right, cannot be associated with any of the silver coin issues of the Iceni. Coin hoards appear to have been buried as part of the Boudiccan revolt but original distribution patterns of the three main silver issues have not been identified through these hoards. It would appear that the coins circulated and the issues became thoroughly mixed. The large hoards might also have been consolidated from smaller hoards. I call such things secondary hoards.

The Iceni hypothesis attempts to track influences through silver coins that had been paid out, for services or affiliations, or that were cast on the ground at a Druid council site as a display of surplus wealth to encourage support, perhaps along clan or factional lines. You would think at first that influences would gradually spread outward from the hillfort occupants to the farmland surrounding it, but any site at some distance but of some importance like an industrial site such as an important metalworking shop, or where natural resources like metals or salt are obtained. There could also be longer distance relationships like marriage, fosterage or military/political support. Such relationships can easily cross tribal divisions, but most coins that are left are still current in the general area. Longer distance offerings at Druid council sites might be other items of value like metals in pellet or ingot form or jewelry, or simply evidence of many cattle bones from a huge (and wasteful) feast.

The key to finding revealing information is not in the hoards, but in "multiple deposits" of coins that would have been used to gain support in a social process similar to the north American west coast native potlatch. If such coins are part of an an expansionist plan of a tribe or king, they could be identified by die links and coins focused at one part of the chronology of the type in question. Another, less clear picture, might be obtained from die links between stray coins in the general area that are not clearly part of the same multiple deposit. This would be looking for an earlier stage of circulation mixing than is usual for the broader area.

After seeing such die links in what has been called a scattered hoard, and what I thought were silver pellets at a Dobunni site that were related to similar finds from alleged hoards in eastern England, I started to see trading patterns between the Dobunni and the Iceni along the Jurassic Way which avoided most of the Belgic south-east tribes. Oxford, however, was an area where several tribes or groups would meet in council. After the pellets were analyzed (together with what I thought was a silver ingot) and they turned out to be, respectively, very high tin potin and white gold, the Norfolk connection was still maintained, but in an unexpected way. The white gold also had an amount of tin in it and, other than the tin content, was typical for a Norfolk wolf stater. Tin also exists in the redder gold alloy of some of the Freckenham staters and is a unusual element to find in any gold stater.

For the longest time, the inscribed British Celtic coins have been called "dynastic issues", yet by bracketing social characteristics reported by Caesar with early Irish Medieval laws (because Ireland was never Romanized), we can find only evidence that family connections in power were frowned upon, through fosterage and the forbidding of joint power by brothers, and that Druid or legal representation for the people existed at all social levels, and most importantly at each end of the bracket, were multiple kings of varying status within each tribe. The argument that Commios started a dynasty populated mainly by his own sons (marked on the coins with F for filius) is especially weak when we consider the life expectancy of those people. Filius might be an adopted or clan title and not indicative of a natural son at all. We also see that was often considered to be a name is most likely either a title or an assumed reign name (as was practiced in Chinese dynasties and in N. American first nations).

The habit of assigning a Medieval, feudal, model to pre-Roman British societies is probably due to the great amount of Medieval Celtic stories from Ireland, Wales and France, and the model of coin use is influenced by the purposes we give to more modern coinages. Trade and coinage is far too associated and is practical only at a late stage with multiple denominations and small change. Base metal does not mean a market: the Durotriges economy eventually eliminated gold and their staters became copper alloy coins that were the only denomination and were not "small change".

The Iceni hypothesis also extended into my theories about the British tin trade in the last two centuries BC, but whenever you come across an important line of reasoning, all sorts of other evidence starts to show up with it. If your inquiry is along the lines of the latest academic theory or fad, you do not get such distractions at all. In fact, the lack of these are a sure sign of academic navel-gazing. The theories and fads exist only because of their lack of available material proof and thus can occupy as much time as any wild goose chase. Many of them are due to memes in their environment.

So, I have covered just about everything in this long series because there were far too many assumptions being made about the function of coinage and the type of society which used them. It is always best to look at evidence with fresh eyes and not to get too immersed with what had gone before. The psychological viewpoints indicated by certain types of theories is something that too few consider. It is best, always, to stick with what the material evidence shows, and to try to keep ourselves out of the evidence by understanding how our own psychology and experience can affect what we think about such evidence.

I do plan to expand my theories about the tin trade to include evidence from continental potins, even though literature on the subject cannot compare with the work that has been done on the British material. Whatever I do, it will appear here, or course. Tomorrow: what else has been happening while I have been busy with this topic.