Ancient coins and ancient commerce

I have seen some articles about ancient coins being claimed by the
modern successor states to the governments that minted them, e.g.,
Italy trying to claim ownership Roman coins.

If a bunch of northern barbarians sacked Rome and took the booty with
them when they left, doesn't it become part of *their* descendents
cultural heritage? Or what if the coins were traded peacefully for,
say, Baltic amber or British tin? Didn't the ownership of the coins
change hands legitimately back when the coins were still currency,
and the presence of those coins in any archeaological digs becomes
part of *local* history?

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On Dec 24, 10:30*am, (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
I have seen some articles about ancient coins being claimed by the
modern successor states to the governments that minted them, e.g.,
Italy trying to claim ownership Roman coins.

If a bunch of northern barbarians sacked Rome and took the booty with
them when they left, doesn't it become part of *their* descendents
cultural heritage? *Or what if the coins were traded peacefully for,
say, Baltic amber or British tin? *Didn't the ownership of the coins
change hands legitimately back when the coins were still currency,
and the presence of those coins in any archeaological digs becomes
part of *local* history?

--
Please reply to: * * * * * *| "One of the hardest parts of my job is to
pciszek at panix dot com * *| *connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
Autoreply is disabled * * * | * * * * * *-- G. W. Bush, 9/7/2006

Provenance is a relevant issue.

On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:30:43 +0000 (UTC), (Paul
Ciszek) wrote:

I have seen some articles about ancient coins being claimed by the
modern successor states to the governments that minted them, e.g.,
Italy trying to claim ownership Roman coins.

If a bunch of northern barbarians sacked Rome and took the booty with
them when they left, doesn't it become part of *their* descendents
cultural heritage? Or what if the coins were traded peacefully for,
say, Baltic amber or British tin? Didn't the ownership of the coins
change hands legitimately back when the coins were still currency,
and the presence of those coins in any archeaological digs becomes
part of *local* history?

I agree. Much of this cultural patrimony nonsense is just a greedy
grab by current governments in Mediterranean and other source
countries for anything they can get. Another part of it is an
overreaction to large-scale export of antiquities that has occurred in
the past, with this material winding up in museums and such far from
these countries, with most of these exports at the time being totally
legal and legitimate. But there's lots of resentment today in source
countries because of this.

So today you have Cyprus trying to claim as its cultural property any
ancient artifact or coin that may have passed through the island,
Turkey claiming as its cultural property ancient Greek coins that were
struck by the Greeks and used in Greek city-states of Asia Minor many
centuries before the Turks arrived there from Central Asia, so on and
so forth. The U.S. government typically goes along with these demands
so as to avoid upsetting these governments and harming relations.
Archeologists go along because they want to outlaw private ownership
of ancient artifacts and coins, which they contend will eliminate
looting from archeological sites (it won't).

The ancient artifacts and coins hobbies are under assault right now
from these three, very powerful, sources -- source countries, U.S.
government, archeology. Doesn't look good.

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