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BurningFrog a day ago

Impressed that people turned in "1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts".

That gold is worth about $160k!

If I ran the program I would pay at least the metal value to anyone turning artifacts in. To remove the temptation that doubtless keeps some finds away from the science.

olalonde 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If I understand correctly, they were paid $150k for it.

> Aagaard, Dreiøe and their friend the late Poul Nørgaard Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts near the modern town of Fæsted, including armbands that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands [...] Aagaard, Dreiøe and Nørgaard received just over a million kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about $150,000.

BurningFrog 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So they already have a system like I suggested!

I'm glad to hear it!

Less glad that I missed this fact reading the article :)

ambentzen a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?

It's a bit like internet piracy, make it easy and convenient to follow the law and most people will do it.

protocolture 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?

Considering the state of copper theft, the large number of videos on facebook and youtube describing how to melt metals into bar stock, and the low cost of the tools I dont know why this would be considered specialist knowledge.

Maybe if they needed aqua regia or something.

TulliusCicero 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This comment reminds me of discussion when weed gets legalized in the states.

There's always people going, "psh, this won't make weed any more accessible, it's already so easy to get, anybody can do it!"

And yet, nevertheless, inevitably there are people who try it only because it's now legal and openly sold in stores. A lot of people simply don't want to do things they consider shady, no matter how easy it is. Maybe it being legalized doesn't make it any more accessible to you, but you aren't everyone.

protocolture 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I see where you are coming from but not quite.

What I am saying is that the process is already legal and available, so the process isn't a barrier to melting and selling the gold. I don't take a position on whether someone would simply not do it because its illegal.

The process of growing and selling weed was illegal, and thus also a barrier to accessing weed.

If anything your line of reasoning makes me want to legalise and protect melting gold you find and selling it.

sandworm101 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It isn't that easy. Anyone paying money for a homemade bar will test it first. The ancient gold will be very impure by bullion standards. The fact that it was horde gold will be found out very quickly.

protocolture 10 hours ago | parent [-]

>Anyone paying money for a homemade bar will test it first.

There's a pretty lively market in gold on ebay. Often forged into bars or coins by end users.

I have personally dealt with retail gold buyers who legally clear gold of all sorts with little question. They pay based on purity and likely have a price for whatever purity the horde gold is smelted at.

There's also that Singapore Gold Port at the Singapore Airport. Even if they wont touch you directly, there are IIRC, in person trades in the airport which can then be deposited straight into storage.

BurningFrog 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can't say I've tried, but I think it's pretty easy to find buyers for gold.

Melting it removes the legal risk.

dwattttt 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Melting it removes _a_ legal risk. I'm sure if someone looks they can find a risk or two still there somewhere.

thrance 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You'd be surprised of how easy it is for "Joe Random from Nowhere" to sell their illegaly sourced priceless artefacts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_Treasure

kefal 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's Denmark, of course they will turn it in.

bazoom42 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Crime and theft happen in Denmark as in other countries. But finders get compensated for the metal value so unless they are collectors or have contacts to private collectors, there is not a lot to gain.

I know a guy who found a gold treasure on a field and he was contacted by a private collector after appearing in local news (he turned them down). So who knows how often it happens? But I don’t think finds are common enough that detecting and selling can be a lucrative business. It is usually enthusiasts with an interst in history.

euroderf 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Wasn't it Copenhagen where the biker gangs had RPGs ?

asjo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It was indeed - one was fired against a club house, in 1996: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Poulsen

simonask 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's enthusiasts - hobbyists willing to invest in metal detection gear, spending their free time doing this. If their aim was to get wealthy, they would be doing basically anything else.

Digging for gold artifacts and treasure is not a great strategy to become rich - these people are obviously much more interested in the history, and maybe the recognition. Of course they will turn it in.

21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
fudgybiscuits 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whether that's good or not really does depend on how much gold was found though, could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!

southernplaces7 20 hours ago | parent [-]

>could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!

Doubtful. Finding such a hoard and reporting it to the authorities for formal examination by default means showing where you found it so the site itself can be examined by archaeologists. They'd likely be able to tell if you'd found more than you reported in the cache site. It's like forensics, but for ancient artefacts and ruins, pretty sophisticated at times.

bazoom42 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You do get compensation for the metal value.

colechristensen a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Once properly documented, I have some skepticism that it's really necessary to hold every historical artifact found, inside some museum archive basically never to be seen again.

AlotOfReading a day ago | parent | next [-]

It isn't, but it's impossible to know what will be useful for research again in the future, so historical researchers make an effort to preserve what they can and avoid excavating if possible.

southernplaces7 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What else should be done with the artifacts? And also why not? It's like storing your data. If you can keep it relatively inexpensive, why not keep it around just in case some future need or curiosity makes it worthwhile?

neaden 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I mean roman coins for example are so plentiful that they are sold relatively cheaply, we have more then enough of them for all the museums of the world if they wanted them. I don't think viking era treasure is anywhere close to as common but there comes a point where it's plentiful enough.

colechristensen 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If I find something without particular significance that's not a part of an archaeological site, say a Roman coin in a field somewhere, it's fine if there's a requirement that a museum gets to take records and do any sort of scans it wants. But unless it was some item of particular cultural heritage or research interest, the museum should give it back to me or buy it from me or give me something in return like a fair tax break.

Lots and lots of stuff gets cataloged and archived and basically never looked at again resulting in little archeological value or any other public value and is kind of just scientific hoarding.

BurningFrog 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can probably do a detailed 3d scan and retain 95% of the scientific value.

heikkilevanto 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, at some point they want to analyze the impurities in the gold, or the isotopes, or something else we don't know yet...

BurningFrog 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, that can be done together with the scanning.

fc417fc802 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It can't, because we don't know what yet unknown questions we might want to ask in the future or what yet uninvented technology might come to exist. Add a limited budget and storage space and it becomes clear why the preference is often not to excavate but instead to restrict public access to the site and leave things in the ground.

BurningFrog 3 hours ago | parent [-]

We can measure impurities and isotopes extremely well, which is what the post I responded to mentioned. This is very mature technology.

You're right that we don't know what new branches of science might be developed that could produce new insights from old artifacts.

But remember the situation. My idea makes it possible to record and analyze ancient finds that currently just disappear. It only gets us 99% of what we want, but in the current system we get 0%.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Nirvana...

rectang 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank goodness you weren't in charge of the Herculanum scrolls.

pbhjpbhj 11 hours ago | parent [-]

We can produce 3D scans of the gold, do mass spectroscopy.

Do you feel that vikings somehow embedded secrets in their coin?

Scrolls have writing on, if we can't yet read them we'd know that there was something else to discover (known unknowns) and clearly wouldn't dispose of them.

Of course the Vikings might have embedded secret extraterrestrial technologies in their coins, but I'd take the bet that they haven't.

The downthread comment about leaving things in the ground is right though -- it was, and is imo, the right thing to do.

delusional 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm pretty sure more than 5% of the scientific value is in the actual physical material. You can't examine the physics of the thing from a 3d scan.

20 hours ago | parent [-]
[deleted]
tokai 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The budget to pay for these finds is regularly exceeded already. Paying the gold price would fleece the National Museum.

BurningFrog 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Understood. But it's also true that you get what you pay for.

jopsen 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Getting a cut is probably better.

Spending gold you can't document the origin of is most decidedly going to be a hassle. Certainly not without risk. And you probably don't have money laundering connections.

And you'll sleep better at night.

tokai 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In this case it bought the most productive amateur archeology community in Europe :)