Will it prompt a new fad for everything Celtic? Collectors always face a Catch 22: whenever anything collectible becomes popular, its financial value increases. The collector's holdings become more valuable which is always pleasing to the collector, that is, until they go to buy the next item for the collection. If the exhibit is exceptionally popular and the Celtic fad becomes big enough, then can we expect it to be followed by a lot of Celtic fakes appearing on the market? Apart from the coinage, fakes of early Celtic art are so rare that I cannot even remember seeing one. What is common now, though, is that all sorts of non-Celtic artifacts are sold as Celtic. Caveat emptor, and buy the books before the antiquities.
A little more than 100 people live in the area shown on this Google Earth image. On the 23rd of this month, my friend Monte, myself and my coydog Tristan will be setting out on a 1,400+ kilometer road trip there and (hopefully) back. The goal of our expedition will be to reach Monte's quarter section (160 acres). You can see an implied cleared rectangle of land west of Hansard Lake and north of Aleza Lake. That is a section, and Monte owns the top left hand quarter.
A couple of years ago, we tried to get in on foot, going between Aleza Lake and the small nameless lake to the left. We ended up at impenetrable marshes and had to turn back. There used to be a bridge across the creek that feeds into Hansard Lake From Aleza Lake, but it is no longer in any condition to cross. The land to the west is owned by a rancher with the improbable name of Lloyd George. While he cannot grant Monte permanent access, he can reach Monte's land across his and has let his cattle graze there, and has agreed to take us in on that route the next time we are there. We are going to try and find our own route through Crown land.
We will first drive (4WD) up Camp 27 Road, which you can see snaking up to the left and then to the right from the Upper Fraser Road to the east of Eaglet Lake. We will then take the fork to the right at the point where Camp 27 Road starts to head to the left. From there, we will the go north east past the approximate 50 acre rough square of cleared land and then downward to the quarter section bordering Monte's land to the east. Monte recalls that land is owned by someone in Calfornia, but providing there are no "private property" notices, we can legally cross it. We might have to find a route through Crown land directly to Monte's quarter section. The map is deceptive: it shows Monte's land as freshly cleared which make the aerial photograph about fourteen years old. The forest can change dramatically in that time. From photographs taken recently from a small plane, Monte's land is now mostly meadow dotted with a few trees. Lloyd George told us that the beavers have moved in on the main creek that meanders through Monte's land. This should be good and hopefully what was a marsh surrounded creek is now a series of beaver ponds created by their damming the creek.
My InReach Explorer will be taking GPS readings every ten minutes and sending emails with a short message and the map coordinations by email via satellites to our friends and families back home. If a tragedy strikes and we are too injured to walk out and the 4WD has failed us, an emergency beacon will be activated and a helicopter will be dispatched to rescue us. I will have Google Earth on my tablet (there is no cell-phone reception there), other maps, a compass, bear spray, hand flares, Bowie knives, machetes, a chain saw, gold pan, camping gear etc. I will also be taking a tiny "ghetto-blaster" with Bluetooth which can play tunes from my tablet. I am thinking that another bear deterrent will be some loudly played songs from Einstűrzende Neubauten:
I am hoping the bears will think we brought a small army with us. Another gadget we are bringing is a radio-controlled drone quadcopter with a video camera attached. It can fly more than 150 feet up and get video footage of what it sees. Monte is also bring his video camera to document the trip. I think it unlikely that there will be much of a problem from forest fires as that area is much damper than a lot of British Columbia, but there is a still a province-wide ban on even campfires in a campground (there are no campgrounds, motels, gas stations or shops in the area shown on the map). We will be camping some kilometers to the east, at Amanita Lake (don't eat the mushrooms) not far from McGregor river (I must get a jet boat one day):
See how desolate this area is?
Even before we reach the general area , we will be taking another risk: driving to the upper Fraser from the Yellowhead Highway via the Bowron Forest Service Road. It will save us an hour and a hundred kilometers. That road has potholes, an "iffy" old wooden bridge and it sometimes gets washed out. A similar road not far away is this one that someone risked exploring on a motorbike:
This is exactly what we will be facing (another road off Eaglet Lake through the forest). You can see how the forest reclaims the roads that people make through it (for logging, gold mining and hunting):
When the man on the video says "This would be even hard to walk", he is telling the truth. Monte and I walked along an overgrown ATV trail there in 2013, but it ended in marsh. A bear growled at us from its day bed in the forest close to us, but it (thankfully) did not make itself visible to us (grizzlies will often charge if surprised thus).
Finally, this is Amanita Lake where we will camp at least one night:
Yipee-ki-yay! This is not my usual sort of greeting, but the Calgary Stampede ("The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth") is underway and all Calgarians are expected to get into the spirit. Perhaps if I do not, an old Calgary law might be invoked and I will be given a horse and a Winchester and escorted to the edge of town by the sheriff.
I thought about going to the parade that kicked everything off and getting some photographs for this blog, but I have settled for a couple of recycled Stampede Rodeo photos I took few years ago. I have been past the Stampede grounds four times since it started, on the train (standing room only) buying a pack for my coydog Tristan, and then returning it for a refund when it did not fit (it also looked uncomfortable for the dog). A couple of tourists took his photo when we were on the train.
In recent years, Calgary has been trying to get away from its "cow-town" image and has been stressing the city's business importance. But "oil town" did not go over too well when the politicians started siding more with the big oil and gas companies than the public who had some problems with them. The Conservative Party in Alberta split into two factions creating a new party. So there was now a right wing party and an extreme right wing party. Perhaps they thought that the Liberals would never get elected in Alberta, and never even considered the socialist New Democratic Party. Not too bright of them. Strange things can happen when you split votes like that. The NDP got elected and no one was more surprised than themselves. Only one or two of them expected to get a seat in parliament.
Calgary is still cow-town, it's in our blood. Mess with us and we will put together the lynch mob. The conservative party swings silently from the spruce trees.
Years ago, Royal American Shows operated the Midway. Now it is the Canadian Conklin Shows (read all about it here). I preferred the former. There is no place for respectability at a carnival. There has to be burlesque in the western theme; there has to be "the giant Parisian sewer rat" that turns out to be a coypu; there has to be freaks. It's a carnival. Take all of that away and you have only a show that gives you rides and takes your money in various sorts of gambling games where you pay more for the tickets than you get in the prizes even if you are the champ. That part was always about impressing your date with the cheap giant stuffed toy that just cost you $80 by trading up on the smaller prizes.
The Calgary Stampede Board, greedy as ever, decided to eliminate the private area for the carnies that was hidden in the middle of all of the power generators. It was a social place for them where they could get a nutritious home-cooked meal (can you imagine carnies having to survive on midway food for a whole touring season?). The Stampede Board saw no profit in that. Many of the carnies left at that point, including my old friend Scott and the Stampede had already moved the sideshows to less busy parts of the midway.
For north American rodeo, though, the Calgary Stampede is still Carnegie Hall; the Oscars; the Nobel Prize.
If I do relent and visit the grounds this year, I will get you some more recent pictures.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes 1746-1828 Que pico de Oro! (What a golden beak!)
Aquatint. Plate 53 of Los Caprichos, 1799
"This looks a bit like an academic meeting. Perhaps the parrot is speaking about medicine? However, don’t believe a word he says. There is many a doctor who has a ‘golden beak’ when he is talking, but when he comes to prescriptions, he’s a Herod; he can ramble on about pains, but can’t cure them: he makes fools of sick people and fills the cemeteries with skulls."
For the third time, I present this print by Goya "What a golden beak!" together with what he had to say about its subject. This time, I'm making it bigger. John Howland's comments about my last post reminds me that the public in general might be mystified about what collectors do and what they think about some of the issues brought up by various archaeologists with regard to so-called "cultural heritage" matters.
With "real world" issues about collecting or with any subject at all, for that matter, a lot of people believe that academics are the people to ask. Yet, if something is wrong with their car, the same people will ask a mechanic, not an academic. As I said in my comment to John Howland, if an archaeologist tells you to buy only those things where the dealer will tell you where he or she obtained the item, then that, alone is proof that the archaeologist either does not know what they are talking about, or is trying to get you to believe in some sort of conspiracy among dealers. If they do not tell you about the privacy laws that binds the dealer, seek advice elsewhere. For any sort of advice, check the person's qualifications to be safe. If an academic is telling you anything about coins, simply ask what they have published on the subject. Of course, a lot of rubbish has also been published, but if someone is telling you about coins and promoting any sort of academic approaches and has never had anything published on the subject then you should be rather suspicious. If the academic does have a history of a decade or two of publications on coins, they might still be wrong about something: numismatists often specialize in only one area of the subject. It does little good to ask a specialist in Celtic coins anything much about Byzantine coins, but you do not ask the bakery department of your supermarket about cooking roast beef, either. Having even an archaeology doctorate on a numismatic subject does not mean that a person will know anything about coins other than what is focused in their thesis.
I have never been an academic, and thus have never needed to publish for the worry of perishing. Yet, I have several academic publications consisting of journal papers (5); an encyclopaedia entry on Celtic coinage, and a ten year study published as a book at Oxford. In fact it was only the book which was written "on speculation" of publication. Everything else I have published was by request (one from an independent numismatist; one from a numismatist at a cultural organization, the rest from working archaeologists). It was also an archaeologist who nominated me for an FSA and other archaeologists who "seconded" that nomination, and presumably also voted me in. It was also an archaeologist who arranged to have my book published by Archaeopress at Oxford. Any academic worth his or her salt would blow me out of the water as far as publications go as that is the bread and butter of their very career. The best generalist numismatists can be found in the ranks of coin dealers. While an academic with tenure can get away with writing almost anything, the coin dealer's very survival depends on their understanding of the subject. So ask one anything about coins, but also make sure that if they have no publications of their own, they can cite several years of having a coin business, and it probably will be best if that business has walls and display cases and their hours posted on the front door.
Collectors might be independent or museum curators, the concerns of both are about the same. Museum staff really in the know can cite many years of experience. Museum jobs are more time-consuming than you might think and the personal projects of museum staff can take many years to finish if they do it on "company time". I have collected, bought and sold, and worked as a cataloger in the military department of Glenbow museum, so I am both specialist and a bit of a generalist, too. One of my journal papers 'on request" was not even to do with anything Celtic, it was on the nature of primitive religions and its focus was a Indian of the Blood tribe (Blackfoot Confederacy). It was published in England.
Someone, whose name I will not mention, once said "Collectors are the real looters". Had it been said by someone not as prominent, it might have become a meme. As I am not that prominent, perhaps I might be able to start a meme (memes seem to emerge from nothingness). How about something in the same style? I know: "Journalists are the real terrorists". Without journalists, we might actually have to personally experience a terrorist act. Of course, politicians, too, can benefit from being terrorists: politicians sometimes are able to get more votes by convincing the voters that they are going come down very hard on violent crime (often this is done when such crimes are actually diminishing because later, a declining violent crime rate can then be used as "proof" that the politician's promises had been fulfilled). The message seems to be "Vote for me or you will be murdered in your beds". Remember, terrorism is not killing or blowing things up, these are actions that can create terror. Terror is terror.
Aiding and abetting anyone to commit a criminal act is often treated just as harshly as the commission of the crime. It would be a huge stretch, though, to convince juries that journalists are the real terrorists. I have a number of friends who are always telling me horror stories from the news because they know I do not follow the news except for things in which I am actively involved, or have as a major interest. While I try to discourage such reporting, I would not want my friends arrested as terrorists.
The anti-collecting lobby has actually done a great service to terrorism in recent years by being so vocal about the looting of archaeological sites and then blaming most of it on collectors. Back when the collector/looter saying originated, looting was mainly profit-driven, but as the anti-collecting lobby was so vocal and aimed almost all of their rhetoric on dealers and collectors, the terrorist organizations saw a splendid opportunity to add to the fear caused from violence with getting citizens to fight each other over something. Not only that, but by targeting archaeological sites and objects for their violence under the pretense of religious laws against idolatry, they could also get ordinary people to hate other ordinary people within the same country. It was a terrorist's dream come true.
Every week, it seems, a number of archaeologists encourage people to break the law by saying that collectors should demand a chain of ownership record for any artifact or coin that is purchased. Fortunately for the archaeologists in question, they are only breaking the law if a dealer goes along with the request and supplies details of the object's last owner. This violates privacy laws in most jurisdictions. Any dealer's purchase is recorded together with the seller's identity. If an object is thought, by the police, to be stolen they can obtain a warrant for that information and it can be used in court. The archaeologist's either do not know, or pretend not to know about the crime they are promoting, and while no journalist is going to pay very dearly for spreading fear, archaeologists might not be so lucky as their advice, while technically "aiding and abetting", might not easily get them arrested, but could quite easily get them named in a civil case brought about by a dealer whose business was threatened by their advice. In such a case, the person who actually refuses to buy something unless its prior owner is identified might not even be named in the suit at all as they are the victim of the archaeologist. Even so, I don't think I could succeed with the creation of an "archaeologists are the real terrorists" meme. They have certainly contributed, though, and ideally so for iconoclastic terrorists as their own claims that the past is worshipped cannot thus be easily refuted at all. Given all that is going on, having someone pay a huge settlement for attempting to connect an honest businessman with terrorism would not be too much of a surprise to me.
When I first started looking at the British Museum collections database, their details on the Fishpool hoard confused me. While the number of coins in the hoard that they give is accurate, they do not mention that the museum does not have at least 85 of the coins. These went straight to the market and were sold at the Glendining "Fishpool Hoard sale of October 17, 1968. I first became aware of the hoard from an article in Seaby's bulletin not long after that. Seaby's also had some of the 85 coins for sale. It is also not mentioned that because some of the coins could be grouped together from their wear patterns that did not correspond to other, similar, coins in the hoard, it was thought that the hoard was more of a "bankers hoard" than that of an individual and represented the savings of a number of people. I think that more coins would have been released to the market had it not been for some impropriety committed by all but one of the finders. It is unclear as to whether the "lucky little boy" included his four coin reward with the rest of the Glendining sale. The coins are still circulating among collectors with two of the Fishpool coins in this Baldwin sale of just a few years ago. Not the huge differences in values over the years.
Back in the early sixties, when I first started to collect coins, it was very common for museums (especially the British Museum) to retain only those Treasure Trove hoard coins that were needed for their collection. The rest were allowed to the market where they might inspire far more than by sitting in a museum case while the visitors filed by.
One of the greatest advantages of allowing a hoard to be sold at auction is that its catalogue soon becomes a standard reference as not only are the coins properly catalogued, but details of the find and the background history of the hoard is also included. No taxpayers were inconvenienced by the production of this catalogue. No taxpayers footed the bill for the coins not retained by the British Museum. The catalogue had a far greater circulation than any paper on the hoard.
Unfortunately, such hoards are now treated as fetish objects and are imbued with the same psychic significance as was given to saint's relics in the history of the Christian Church. Science pays dearly for this attitude as many museums are reluctant to allow the even slight damage from polishing a 40 micron area of a metal object for a fairly accurate electron microprobe analysis. This was a test I eagerly had done to the first British find of the early Celtic plastic style. I expect the British Museum will be less curious about the second example. Don't hold your breath waiting for science on that one. Religious proselytizing is the archaeological raison d'être of today. Welcome to the new dark ages.
Wishing all my American friends a very happy Fourth of July, I'll be back on Monday with more in this series.
There are seventeen museums and public art galleries listed for the Calgary area, but if you are interested in the ancient, classical, world, there is nothing for you here. Well, almost nothing. Instead of searching in the museums, you could visit my Friend Robert Kokotailo at Calgary Coin Gallery. He will be able to show you lots and answer all of your questions, too. Unlike a visit to a museum, if you see something you like, you can legally take it home with you. Many people have made their first contact with the ancient world at Robert's shop. I have helped him out on occasion, during busy times, and the times I value most are those when I encourage someone to collect these things. Other people have taken ancient coins and objects to Robert to identify and authenticate and he never charges for a verbal opinion and a valuation (insurance valuations are more work and charges will apply). He is also the best person I know for detecting fakes. If you are uncertain about a coin you own, Robert can either put your mind at rest, or confirm your worst suspicions.
I have worked at two museums in Calgary: the major one being Glenbow Museum, where I started doing inventory work and ended up as a cataloger in their military department. The other museum was military, too, but it occupied a large room (actually an adjoining Quonset hut) at Crown Surplus. I did little in the museum and mostly served customers in the shop. The star of the exhibit was a complete and working Centurion Tank, although later the British Army delivered Gord another tank in need of some restoration: a Churchill. Crown Surplus is now celebrating its 60th anniversary, so if you get a chance, drop by. Gord is the nicest person.
Both Robert and Gord adapted to the WWW very well, Robert switched from his old mail lists to two different web sites, and Gord started with the 'net early enough to score the enviable domain name "armysurplus.com". He has turned down a high offer for that name.
Nowadays, people can deal in ancient coins, antiquities and military antiques with only a virtual store. The market used to consist of the very big dealers who were internationally known; smaller dealers with a shop who were mostly known only locally, but who could reach more customers with a mail-out list. Photographs of stock for both types of dealers were usually a little sparse because photography and printing was expensive. With the web and digital cameras, dealers can illustrate almost everything, and no one really needs a shop. Often, though, a shop can serve also as a museum, or even have one on its premises. It then becomes a valuable part of the local culture which is not supported by your taxes. Who can argue with that?
What would be funny if it was not so tragic is when customs officials (and this has happened in the U.S.) require a dealer's or auction catalog photograph of an object as proof against it being smuggled into the country. The vast majority of coins and antiquities sold before the WWW were never photographed by the sellers. Honest representatives of the anti collecting lobby have not done their homework about the history of the market, and the dishonest do not care to mention that. You should be able to identify which is which from their writing style. Only an honest person can write honestly. It should be fairly obvious to most readers.
The person who had the most profound effect on numismatics in the twentieth century is, as far as I know, not a numismatist. Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW, and numismatics will never be the same again.
If I had to choose just one numismatist who best used this new technology to educate people about their favorite topic in the early days of the WWW, it would be Doug Smith for his "Doug Smith's Ancient Coins (originally, "Ancient Greek and Roman Coins"). Since he first uploaded his web site in 1997, many other dealers and collectors have followed his lead. A number of auction houses and coin dealers retain archives of sold coins on their web sites and many of these allow free reproduction of their images for non-profit use. The V-Coins Mall provides the facility for their dealers.The research pages of Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. (C.N.G.) being the best-known and I have made much use of their free images.
The last time that I visited the coin department of the British Museum was in 1966. At that time, the door of that department had no sign on it. The Greek coins that were displayed for the public were all British Museum electrotypes. If you wanted to see a specific coin you had to go to the coin department and sign in with details about why you were there. The British Museum Greek coin catalogues were almost hopelessly out of date, but at least they are now on line (thanks to another amateur, Ed Snible).
With such a profusion of amateur and professional numismatic educational sites it is necessary to clarify where the best knowledge in numismatics might be found. At the very top of the list are the specialist collectors: when I recatalogued the Wallace collection of Euboean (Greece) coinage, I handled about ten times the number of coins in the British Museum Catalogue. This is the sort of collector to approach for your toughest questions.
For general inquiries about ancient coins, do not visit a museum: they actually see very few coins compared with the larger dealers in ancient coins. Most professional numismatists are also dealers. Some of them gave up more financially rewarding professions in order to be around what they loved. While still professional, such people are true amateurs at heart. For anyone with literacy problems, an amateur does it for the love of the subject, and passion is what leads to expertise. An amateur is not someone who does something badly, as in "amateurish".
A couple of anti-collecting bloggers have been deliberately feeding everyone disinformation by saying that the real professional numismatists are all academic. While this provokes much laughter among dealers and collectors in the know, the public are easily duped. Understand it this way: the larger dealers and auction houses depend on their knowledge for their livelihood. If they are lacking in that knowledge, their business will suffer. They also see far more coins every month than are seen by any museum staff. Nothing much bad happens to academic numismatists unless their errors are severe and they have no tenure. I met such a numismatist. This person had a Ph.D from Cambridge University, but such qualifications are usually given to a very specific subject within numismatics and is no guarantee that other aspects of numismatics will be understood very well. This person became the curator of a museum collection. Someone brought that person a Ptolemaic Egyptian bronze coin for identification. Even a ten year old beginning collector of ancient Greek coins would recognize a Ptolemaic bronze coin (ten year olds can afford one). He or she might not know which Ptolemy issued the coin, the designs are often very conservative, and require expert knowledge, but that a coin is Ptolemaic rarely presents much of a problem for the beginner, and they have some features unique to them. This curator, however, did not even recognize the very common coin as being Ptolemaic. The very last action taken by this curator, was to have all of the Greek silver coins sent to a jeweller to be buffed so they would be nice and shiny for the public.
So how can you tell if an academic really knows their stuff? Two questions should serve your problems:
How long has this person studied coins? If it is more than twenty years then you might be OK. Numismatics has no degrees, such are degrees in other subjects like history or archaeology. No one is going to be an expert after only the few years necessary to obtain such a degree unless they had a lot more years of study than just that.
How much help are they giving to beginners and even advanced collectors through the various numismatic fora or their websites and blogs?
Actions always speak louder than words.
Tomorrow: how the WWW changed the ancient coin market.
To my Canadian readers, have a very happy Canada Day!
You often hear some archaeologists claiming that things can disappear into private collections. This probably originates in the media image of the wealthy collector from the forties and the fifties. He is usually sitting in a wing-back armchair in his secret vault sipping a brandy while admiring some stolen work of art. Did such a person ever actually exist? probably not. A more realistic statement from the archaeologists would be that things can disappear into museum collections. Any major museum can only display a minuscule percentage of its holdings. The museums were very much siding with those archaeologists when I first went online in 1995, but now the same archaeologists are now also picking on the museums for not following their ideas about due diligence (needless to say, none of these archaeologists have any personal experience of conducting due intelligence themselves). Very few collectors or dealers are being sympathetic to those museums. There is a saying in Hollywood, something like: be kind to those you meet on your way up, because you will probably meet them again on your way down.
Archaeologists digging on the shore of Calvert Lake in British Columbia, Canada, might have found sets of the oldest human footprints to be found in North America. The footprints could date to thirteen thousand years, but there is a slight snag: the land had risen at that location so the footprints are nowhere near as deep as might be imagined. Because of the unclear stratigraphy, it is also possible that the footprints are only two thousand years old. I hope for the former, of course, but suspect the latter.
Just south of British Columbia is the state of Washington and in 1996, on the banks of the Columbia River at Kennewick, skeletal remains were found of a man that was carbon dated to about nine thousand years. Because of the unusual structure of the bones which appeared different from the local native populations, some archaeologists speculated that "Kennewick Man" might have been European. The local natives, said that he was one of their own and fought to be able to conduct a funeral for him. Well, the score is now official: Native population: 1 Archaeologists 0.
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