Why have archaeologists singled out ancient coin collectors?
Well, actually they haven’t. There is already intense pressure from this group against collectors of all sorts of antiquities from Classical to Pre-Columbian. And, the archaeologists have taken aim at metal detector enthusiasts who search for Americana like Colonial and Civil War artifacts. Collectors of fossils and Native American artifacts have been under fire for years. The belief of the archaeological community is that if any object is more than 100 years old, and it came out of the ground, it is sacrosanct and only within their purview to recover, study, interpret and protect. Even museums are under extreme pressure to display only objects that have a provenance acceptable to the archaeological community. To put the situation in a nut shell, archaeologists want total control of the past. They seem to honestly believe that they are the only members of society qualified and deserving enough to unravel the secrets of the past. How long will it be before they convince naive legislator
