From Mr Mark Hall
Sir: The recent allocation of a Late Bronze
Age hoard from Corrymuckloch,
Perthshire, to the National Museum of
Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh illustrates a
growing sense of concern with the operation
of the Scottish treasure trove system.
The hoard, found in spring 1995, dates
from c 800BC and consists of three sword
fragments, three socketed axe-heads, and a
remarkable ladle-like vessel. Under Scottish
law, all finds are reported to the
Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer
(Q<R) who, on the advice of
the Treasure Trove Advisory Panel
(TTAP), decides whether to exercise the
Crown's right to claim the finds as treasure;
and then, if that right is exercised, decides
which museum to allocate the finds to.
Early in 1996, the TTAP recommended
allocation to the NMS, and a somewhat
opaque appeal procedure has been pursued
throughout 1996 by Perth Museum and
Art Gallery, who had submitted a detailed,
comprehensive bid for the hoard, only for
it to be seemingly ignored and unanswered
in favour of an NMS bid. The Q<R
made his final decision in August, allocating
the hoard to the NMS on the highly
subjective grounds of the `uniqueness' of
the hoard, and the display needs of the
NMS.
Perth Museum and Art Gallery finds the
decision totally incomprehensible and is
urgently seeking a wide-ranging review of
Scottish treasure trove in order to establish
clarity of aims, transparency of process, and
accountability of decision making. To this
end a number of interested parties have
been contacted - including the Secretary
of State, the Crown Office, the Scottish
Museums Council, the Scottish Museums
Federation, and the NMS - with a view to
securing such a review.
This case is not unique, as other museums
- such as Dumfries and Tweeddale -
have encountered similar problems. One
key question that emerges is the independence
of the TTAP Secretariat, which
is based within the NMS, one of the major
bidders for treasure trove artefacts. Another
question is the effectiveness of the appeals
process, as appeals go to the same set of
`judges' responsible for the first recommendation
- the TTAP - although in this
case the appeal seems to have been judged
by the Q<R himself.
The Q<R's report on the Corrymuckloch
hoard recorded that some of the
principal factors determining allocation to
the NMS were whether the finds were
`unique', whether they were already represented
in NMS collections, and whether
they had a key role in Scottish history. In
our appeal, however, we pointed out that
unique objects are not the sole preserve of
the NMS (nor should they be), and that
nationally significant collections are held
by local museums. We also pointed out
that the NMS is not the only institution
able to display the hoard (as they claimed).
This is an issue that touches us all, not
just the small group of us who actually work
in museums. At its heart is a simple question
- should the great national museums
get all the best new finds, leaving little of
consequence for local museums to display?
Yours faithfully,
From Mr Bryan Harmer
Sir: In Roger White's otherwise excellent
piece on Wroxeter (`Wroxeter, rich in a
wealthy land' September), he states that
`Clearly . . . the Cornovian aristocracy did
not care to fully equip themselves with all
the paraphernalia of Roman life'. Although
I have read the article several times, it is still
far from `clear' how this conclusion was
reached, and it still appears to be a sweeping
generalisation.
I have always understood that a lack of
evidence does not constitute negative evidence.
In other words, the fact that very
few portable Roman artefacts were found
by excavation may indicate that the Cornovii
had little use for them, but a host of factors
may have contributed to their absence.
Contrary to the stated conclusion, it is
obvious from the evidence of coins and
sherds that someone had been using Roman-style
trappings, but whether these were
Cornovian aristocrats is definitely not clear
from the article.
Yours faithfully,
From Mr Brendan Derham
Sir: In a recent Equinox programme on
Channel 4, The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies,
and in various recent publications by
Balabanova and others in The Lancet and
elsewhere, it is claimed that various narcotics
have been detected in Egyptian mummies.
The analytical results quoted, however,
are based purely on results from Radio-Immunological
Assays (RIAs) for nicotine,
cocaine and its metabolite benzoylecgonine.
It is generally accepted that RAIs
should only be used for primary screening,
because of the high percentage of false
positives, and that solid conclusions should
only be made on the basis of a more reliable
technique, such as gas chromatography-mass
spectometry. In all publications to
date, it seems that such verifying analyses
have not been done.
Archaeological and ethnographic evidence
exists for the use in the Old World
of a wide range of indigenous pharmacologically
active natural products, in particular
those based on tropane alkaloids - structurally
related to cocaine - present in hen-bane,
mandrake, and nightshade (see BA,
June). As for the nicotine residues claimed
to have been found in the mummies, on the
evidence available it is impossible to identify
their source from a potentially wide range of
nicotine-containing plants.
Until a systematic analytical programme
has been run that provides solid data for
samples taken from artefacts with archaeologically
secure backgrounds, the verdict
remains open on the accusation of drug
abuse in ancient Egypt.
Yours faithfully,
From Mr Philip Butterworth
Sir: In Timothy Taylor's article on the
prehistory of sex (`Uncovering the prehistory
of sex', June), he refers to the front
cover photograph - showing a skeleton
face-up in a grave - and says `the Varna
skeleton appears to have been buried face-down
in the earth'. Was the burial
rearranged before the photograph was
taken?
Yours sincerely,
Timothy Taylor writes: Yes. The cover photo is
of a plastic skeleton in a museum display in
Varna, Bulgaria. Photographs of the 1960s
excavations, however, seem to show the skeleton
was originally face-down in the grave.
Return to the British Archaeology homepage
© Council for British Archaeology, 1996
Scottish treasure
MARK HALL
Human History Officer
Perth Museum and Art Gallery
Perth
10 October
Wroxeter doubts
BRYAN HARMER
Woking, Surrey
20 September
Egyptian drugs
BRENDAN DERHAM
Department of Archaeological Sciences
University of Bradford
2 October
Front cover query
PHILIP BUTTERWORTH
Winchester
27 September
