Abstract
This article examines the status of coins as contemporary deposits in the British Isles. With a focus on both historical and contemporary sites, from the Neolithic long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy, Oxfordshire, to the plethora of wishing-wells and coin-trees distributed across the British Isles, it demonstrates the popularity of coins as ritual deposits. The author considers how they are perceived and treated by site custodians, and concludes with a case study of an archaeological excavation, the 2013 Ardmaddy Wishing-Tree Project, which recovered a large amount of contemporary coin deposits. This article does not aim to locate itself within the debates of site custodianship and accessibility, nor does it propose to address the broader dilemmas of a site’s ritual continuity or resurgence. Instead, its aim is to encourage archaeologists to consider the contemporary deposit as an integral part of the ritual narrative of a site, rather than as disposable ‘ritual litter’.
Highlights
Ritual deposition is not an activity that many people in the Western world would consider themselves frequent – or even infrequent – participants of
As George Henderson notes above, pilgrims would drop a coin of small value into a holy well in order to facilitate a wish (1911: 323)
Modern-day visitors may deposit coins at Wayland’s Smithy only to ‘come again and find the money gone’; they were not taken by an invisible Smith, but by the National Trust rangers who are tasked with the removal of deposits
Summary
Citation for published version: Ceri Houlbrook, “The penny’s dropped: Renegotiating the contemporary coin deposit”, Journal of Material Culture, Vol 20(2): 173-189, March 2015. Document Version: This is the Accepted Manuscript version. The version in the University of Hertfordshire Research Archive may differ from the final published version. Users should always cite the published version of record
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