Unpublished artefacts

[Tarbicus]

I sometimes see mention of how "this belt is in a private collection", and "that gladius has disappeared and is in a collection somewhere", or "they're gathering dust in a museum's archives waiting to be catalogued but that won't happen for a long time if ever..."

Does anyone have any idea how many Roman military pieces there are left 'unpublished' or kept exclusive? Obviously I don't imagine someone can say 21,146, but has anyone got even the roughest guess?

Is it a subject for a new topic, so that at least the phantom pieces reside as a collected list somewhere, and when someone hears or knows of something it can be added? Perhaps split into categories of 'known of but unseen', 'heard of', 'pending publication', 'disappeared', etc? Given the wealth of knowledge on this board there must be a sizeable collective list of known items.

The flip side is it is nice when an individual sets up webpages and altruistically shares their own collection, which seems to happen now and again, and is probably the result of the internet being an alternative to the expensive process of paper publishing and distribution.

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

Problem is that you can't know exactly the archaeological context of some pieces. You can't use for paralel if you are'nt sure it's a real thing or it's a falsification.

I'm archaeologist and i can say that a very high percentatge of the stuff found in the Internet are falsifications.

And the pieces whitout estratigraphical context are very dificult to date only by their fisic caracteristics.

[Robert Vermaat]

Many piece are in Eatern European collections, private or public. many of these are published, but not in a language anyone of us understands (I have had that experience when I tried to get access to plumbatae found in Hungary, Serbia and other countries).
Has anyone ever had experience with items from Turkey, the Middle East or North Africa?

[Arahne]

Who was your source in Serbia?
Mostly publications in Serbia have abstract in English, German or French. And I have to say that there are no permanent private collections in here, everything is heading towards west.

[Robert Vermaat]

Who was your source in Serbia?

Professor Miroslav Vujovic
Department of Classical Archaeology
Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade

[Arahne]

Docent dr Vujovic is the most competent source for roman army in here as You probably know. Cool. Haire.

[Arthes]

Greetings,
I have heard the British Museum has vaults full of artifacts.
There is always something being 'discovered' as it has been left forgotten in a box somewhere and sometimes it is rather too 'convenient' for it to appear just then, but also seems to be authentic...so there are probably collectors who 'sit on' items until the opportune moment....alongside the forgers.
If you consider the number of people in this world and the artifacts they must have left, that is allowing for war destruction, the remoulding of weaponry, long usage, cremations and disintegration of inhumation artifacts, there is still a huge descrepancy...
regards
Arthes

[Viventius]

Ah museums ... I love 'em. Suffice to say, all major museums have loads of artefacts (military and otherwise) not on show. It would be impossible to display everything they have. One of the main problems is getting everything catalogued in a manner that makes the information about the artefacts easily accessible. Sometimes, there's only an old card catalogue and that it takes real knowledge of the collection to find what you're looking for! Stuff is being computerised, but there's often a huge backlog. But don't blame the museums - they're wildly underfunded, don't have the staff, etc. However, many (most?) staff really want people to study their collections.

Many museums welcome volunteers to help them catalogue their collections. If you have regular spare time, it would be worth contacting your local museum.

The Portable Antiquity Scheme might be of interest. It is a government initiative to get people to bring in artefacts for identification. The catalogue of those finds is at:

http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/hom ... liclogin=1

And yes, there's some Roman military stuff on it ...