12th April 2010, 10:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 12th April 2010, 11:05 PM by Ken Denham.)
Nice idea, but what happens to it in the future?
Let's say someone buys a shed-load of Roman pot who lives in a country/area where there is none or little evidence of Roman occupation/influence. Over the course of time the once treasured Roman pot assemblage gets chucked or lost and along comes some future archaeologist who finds it and hey presto, we have evidence of the Romans being there.
An example of this is a Paleolithic hand axe on show at a museum close to me. It was deposited at the museum some time in the 19th century by an antiquarian and is tagged as being found lying in the open up on the Caldbeck fells. Really, righty ho!
If we could work out some method of marking the stuff so it was obviously "brought in" then I don't see why not.
Let's say someone buys a shed-load of Roman pot who lives in a country/area where there is none or little evidence of Roman occupation/influence. Over the course of time the once treasured Roman pot assemblage gets chucked or lost and along comes some future archaeologist who finds it and hey presto, we have evidence of the Romans being there.
An example of this is a Paleolithic hand axe on show at a museum close to me. It was deposited at the museum some time in the 19th century by an antiquarian and is tagged as being found lying in the open up on the Caldbeck fells. Really, righty ho!
If we could work out some method of marking the stuff so it was obviously "brought in" then I don't see why not.