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New in the ANS Digital Library: Coin hoards, by Sydney Noe
Coin hoards
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There is no branch of numismatics which would have a
greater appeal to the average man than the study of hoards and treasure trove.
To some it will cause surprise that such material should need study. Not so to
the archaeologist or the historian, who often has had reason to be grateful for
the data supplied by coin finds. The presentation of some of the causes of
hoarding and of the deductions we may draw from recovered buried treasure is
submitted that the value of some of these results may be made clearer.
We Americans, probably because we are without many opportunities of such a nature
this side of the water, find this subject of especial interest. To be sure, the
treasuries of the Incas of Peru which have been unearthed included the precious
metals in many forms but nothing that has been identified as currency. The
tumuli of the Maya and Aztec civilizations of Central America
will some day yield rich returns to the investigator, but the material
heretofore secured is archaeological or ethnological, and, like that of Peru,
has included little of a numismatic nature. In both cases, the finds are more
closely analogous to those of ancient Egypt where the
accounts often prove more thrilling than fiction. It stimulates the imagination
to read of unrifled tombs where lie haughty princesses of long ago. Their jewels
and the implements of their daily life were placed near at hand in readiness for
the after-world, but food and drink were considered more necessary than gold.
Only with the burials of the later and least interesting period does numismatic
material occur. This is owing to the fact that the early money of the Egyptians
consisted of bullion in an unminted form whose exchange value was determined by
weight. During the Per- sian domination, the darics and sigloi of
the invaders seem to have been in use to a limited degree, but finds show also
that the early coinage of the Greeks circulated to a much more considerable
extent.
Although finds of coin do not occur in this country as frequently as in Europe, one of the basic causes of these burials,
hoarding, is not so foreign to our experience as might be supposed. Only when a
hoard has been buried is there a chance of its becoming treasure trove and we
are not accustomed to burying our savings. Civilization has accustomed us to
other means of safekeeping, and experience has approved them satisfactory. In
the cities, our savings are placed in banks or safe deposits. Let there be a run
on the bank, however, and we see a return to primitive conditions—deposits are
withdrawn as quickly as possible; and until confidence in some other institution
overcomes the distrust caused by the failure, money is hoarded just as carefully
as it was in the time of the Greeks and Romans. When we turn from a section
remote from city life, to districts far removed from the
conveniences which civilization affords, there is little difference from the
procedure of the Ancients. Among the miners, hiding gold-dust becomes a
necessity. So even to-day hoarding is not as exceptional a thing as it is
thought.
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