Hoards are vital to the story and chronology of coins but interpretation is vexed and most are not discovered in controlled excavations but as accidental finds or by illegal metal detector
search.
By both means the coins can disappear either into “trade” or into a museum where they can languish unpublished or worse, back into trade again.
In trade the coins are not always lost and contacts between academics and dealers can lead to a satisfactory sort of reconstruction as in the famous and highly important
Gaziantep Hoard 1994 by
Meadows and
HoughtonFor the study of the
New Style Silver Coinage of
Athens a two volume publication of that title was published by Margaret
Thompson as
ANS 10 in 1961.She using
obverse die transference,
hoard interpretation and stylistic
considerations fashioned this Hellenistic coinage into a chronological sequence .Unfortunately her absolute dating was in error and the coinage is now believed to have run from c164 BC to c 42 BC.
A very vexed portion of the
New Style coinage are those coins that run down to and beyond the sack of
Athens in March 86 BC by
Sulla during the first Mithradatic war: the
Achilles Heel that tarnished Miss
Thompson’s achievement but opened up lots of
New Style comment..
In her
hoards section in the NSSCA above, she wrote of a find in
Italy named the Abruzzi
Hoard and its chequered
history.
It seems the
hoard was split into portions and quickly dispersed in trade, (where some was bought by the
ANS and published in NSSCA
hoard plates), but a portion was seized by the authorities and placed in some
provincial museum. The above listing is what she could reconstruct and seemingly constitutes the situation in 1961.
Her publication of the NSSCA bought about a criticism by
Lewis in the Numismatical Chronicle 1962 of her absolute dating and
hoard analysis, and in the same NC edition there followed a riposte by
Thompson herself.
In “
Athens Again” is the first general publication of the seized portion of the Abruzzi
hoard. She stated it was found by an unnamed colleague in an unnamed
provincial museum, who noted these general details.
51
New Style Tetradrachms
1 Kointos/Charmostra (2 Ears of
Corn)
New Style “Imitation”
4 Sullan
Type with
Monograms3 Mithradates Tetradrachms dated to 90/89 BC
10 Cappadocian drachms said to be Ariarathes VI
“Loads” of Achaean League triobols
She said this latest portion somehow muddied the criticism of
Lewis’s use as an indicator that the
New Style carried on after the Sullan siege and not the series ended with it. I don’t see it.
At some time between 1962 and 1969 the two portions of the Abruzzi
hoard were united and named the Poggio Picenze
Hoard and nominated as
IGCH 2056.
The next mention I could find was by Otto Morkholm in a paper in “Essays in Greek Coinage presented to Stanley Robinson”
aka “
Essays Robinson” Clarendon Press 1968. In “The coinages of Ariarathes
VIII and IX of
Cappadocia”.
Since the early 1960’s B.
Simonetta had published articles on Cappadocian coinage and Otto Morkholm disagreed: not only with the
attribution but on the status of
exergual letters. This became acrimonious with a ding-dong numismatical and then personal battle gracing later NC’s publications.
As far as I can judge Otto Morkholm’s views are essentially correct similar to a situation viz a viz
Lewis and Margaret
Thompson’s NSSCA where a great
work was quickly undermined but in this case with courtesy.
It seems the
Roman Republican coin expert
Crawford publicised the combined
hoard, but the
denarii were claimed to have dispersed into trade (NSSCA), which he published as RRCH 255 in 1969, but noted 97 New Styles. Obviously the imitation has been added to the official New Styles along with the Sullan
types plus a
bit of erroneous addition?
The
provincial museum as the holder of the second portion was identified as Chieti.
H B
Mattingly in “L.
Julius Caesar, Governor of
Macedonia” 1979 briefly mentioned the Kointos /Charmostra “Imitation” and the Poggio Picenze
hoard in a footnote on
his re-arrangement of some of the post-Sullan
New Style coinage.
In 1999 Jennifer
Warren, (in “The Achaian League Silver Coinage Controversy Resolved: A Summary”), on summarizing the position of the Achaean League coinage and a supporter of Boehringher’s insights mentioned the Poggio Picenze
hoard (by implication the
provincial museum’s portion since the Abruzzi
hoard contained no Achaean League coins). She hoped that the various
hoards she mentioned should be quickly published.
The real combined portions are as follows;
80
Athens New Style Tetradrachms
13
Sulla tetradrachms
2
Byzantion late post Lysimachi Tetradrachms
7 Mithradates VI Tetradrachms
1 Nicomedes III
Tetradrachm4 Ariarathes IX
Tetradrachm and 10 Drachms
250 Achaean League Hemidrachms
c 200
Roman Republican denarii ?
In pursuing this
hoard I have found that the
provincial museum is the Museo Archaeolgica d’ Abruzzo Villa Frigerj in Chieti,
Italy, and I am in contact with them in the
hope of getting photographs at least of the owl/amphora
Athens style coins so that I can identify them from
Thompson (or not) and publish them on academia.edu.
Of course, full publication involves not only Individual
identification but also
weight, orientation, size and an assessment of wear and condition, these later attributes might not be possible but are less important. Photographs will generally show most condition details.
The full
hoard published as a whole, and not just picked parts, probably
still tells us that it was as
Thompson originally surmised as the lootings and pay of a Sullan soldier from how many various victims and baggage trains during
his Mithradatic war service we will never know. The
denarii, if they ever really existed, might have been obtained in
Italy.
Sulla had to fight when he got back and maybe the
hoard is evidence of the veteran’s last unlucky throw of the dice.
John Nisbet
October 2018
Obviously in the 40 0dd months since I have written this I have been in sporadic contact with the Chieti Museum but now have been passed on to a pair of of personages , the Famous Dr. Rosaria Mancarini being one of them but the email address was not accurate! I even wrote to the
Italian Embassy to see if they could
help in contacting them and get something done but I fear
Italian Bureaucracy will defeat all. And it will be another 70+ years before anything else happens. Dr Jennifer
Warren died before Chieti responded on the Achaean league coinages where released and I guess I shall join the choir celestial before someone cleans the
glass and wonders what is in this cabinet before purloining the contents..
Sadly this only confirms my long held suspicion about museums, they are only there to keep people in a job, so that they can be obstructive as they can and no questions asked about such obstructiveness. See Corby Museum Northamptonshire UK
selling a masterpiece of Old Kingdom art for some more shoes!
So RIP Scholarship.