Cliff,
I would be interested in other responses to your question about the containers. I have been interested in this question for a long time and have asked around - including talking with many detectorists in Europe and the Middle East. My conclusions are as follows but maybe others know better.
1) Very, very few coins are found in, or with, their containers. A group found in its container can be considered a
hoard - a group of coins buried or hidden together at one time by one person. These are a great resource as they can yeild a huge amount of information about coin circulation and the economy at the time. I don't know what happens to the containers in these cases. Containers can be seen with many famous
hoards displayed in museums. In the illicit trade I suspect that the containers are destroyed long before export and sale. I don't know why they don't appear much with
hoards offered for sale from legal source countries.
2) The vast majority of coin finds are singles, even if several "single" coins are all found in very close proximity - even a few inches apart. One reason for this is that most detectorists
work in agricultural fields. The coins are found relatively near the surface. While many of them may have been in a
hoard in a container once this container was broken by plows or other agricultural implements at some point and the coins were scattered around the
field. The destruction of the container could have occured a few years ago or 1500 years ago or anything in between. In some cases
hoards may have been hidden in perishable containers such as bags which have rotten away.
In addition, if you read through archeologial reports it is clear that coins were also "depositied" individually or in very small numbers as they are usually found this way at archeological excavations. Such "deposits" include the accidental loss of individual coins in markets or urban areas that are then found along ancient roads, sewers and waste tips. Coins are found in small numbers in destroyed buildings. They can be intentionally hidden in very small numbers. A few coins were regularly put in graves in some cultures - ie many
Chernyakhov culture graves.
Sometimes large groups of coins are found in a compact "find" without any container present. This includes
votive sites where coins were deposited for religious or superstitious reasons. This was often the case of travellers or passer-by leaving a coin. Such finds have included wells, springs, ford sites or other river crossings, etc.
3) There are many "faked"
hoards offered for sale with their container, especially low end stuff on that famous
auction site. These consist of an apparently genuine ancient
pot, or fragment(s) thereof, and a group of uncleaned coins. I have physically looked at two of these supposed
hoards both of which shared the same problems. The dirt on the coins did not match the dirt on the
pot. Much more importantly the dirt on the coins very strongly indicated that the coins were found individually not in a group in a container. Coins from a true
hoard appear very different from coins found in the ground.
Hoard coins are all in fairly close contact - though with many tiny air spaces (unless the latter are filled with
extremely fine sand or dust) between and betwixt them. And the
hoard was protected in some form of container. Thus the
hoard coins have far, far less dirt on them. Such dirt is usually much finer. And there are almost always indications of co-location. Staining and "seepage" from one coin to another.
Patina such as malachite crystals, can form in a way which shows how the coin above lay on the coin. Etc. Also, in the two
fake hoards I looked at many of the coins were very damaged (they were in fact semi-junk culls) in a way which appears to have indicated plow damage. There were also some coins taht
had been
harshly cleaned then re-coated in dust while others
still had thick dirt on them. Some of these
fake hoards are explicitly sold as
hoards. In other cases the wording is more careful and it does not actually say that the coins being sold came in that
pot or
pot fragments. In any event, be very suspicious of such "
hoards".
Shawn
