BOOK REVIEW: NUMISMATIC ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA

Numismatic Archaeology of North America: A Field Guide is a book that sought us out. Almost Literally.

In Army chow halls across the country there’s an expression: “Eat First – Taste Later”. That’s certainly a sentiment that carries weight at busy coin shows for your faithful CoinWeek editors. And while we certainly do our best to take in all of the sights and attractions at each of the major coin conventions and auctions we attend throughout the year, it isn’t until we get back to the office, process hour upon hour of footage and follow up with friends and colleagues that we truly get a sense of what we just experienced.

Yet suffice it to say, from the moment we were introduced to the book by the authors we were intrigued.

A flip through the 280+ page, lavishly illustrated book revealed not just the potential usefulness of such a volume – especially for metal detectorists – but also the book’s narrative point of view, which was immediately apparent even though we were just kicking the tires at first.

“Ok, I’m in,” I said. And $50 later, I took my handsome copy of the book and tucked it in amongst my things at the CoinWeek booth.

The book’s introductory chapters describe the origins and development of scientific approaches to numismatics in Europe and how American numismatics is different. Indeed, the United States remains a young country and our archeological history as it comes to money is much different than it is in the so-called “Old World”. But the use of money on the American continent predates European settlement and the mixture of indigenous and invasive cultures presents researchers with a complex, often surprising tapestry of monetary “stories”. And it’s the story that found numismatic material can tell archaeologists that forms the basis of this narrative.

The story of money in North America is a story of Spanish silver and cowrie shells; of wampum, achum, commodity money and money of necessity; of silver and gold coins; of base metal tokens; of paper money, coupons, and scrip. It’s also a story of the intermingling of moneys from faraway cultures and the tales these transplanted stores of value tell us about how these objects were used here, when, and by whom.

It is in the capable telling of this story–written from the perspective of discovery–where Numismatic Archaeology of North America succeeds as an anthropological narrative about money and its exonumic cousins. An unearthed Lincoln cent of recent mintage found a foot or two off of a nature trail may tell an obvious story of human activity in that given area, but what story does a trove of pre-Qing dynasty coins unearthed at a Colorado dig site have to share? Or, for that matter, a cache of Vietnamese phan, yan and dong coinage from 1740-1883?

Numismatic Archaeology of North America: A Field Guide
By Dr. Marjorie H. Akin, Dr. James C. Bard, and Kevin Akin 289 Pages, Routledge. Softback. $50; Hardback $150

To read the complete article, see:
First Read: Numismatic Archaeology of North America: A Field Guide (www.coinweek.com/recent-articles-video/first-read-numismatic-archaeology-north-america-field-guide/)

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