Treasure and Archaeology: Reflections on the Begram Hoard and the Interpretation of Deposits of Valuable Objects

Abstract

Of its many referents in archaeology, ‘treasure’ can also describe rediscovered deposits of valuables, which are widespread in the global archaeological record, and can illuminate various social, ritual, economic, and historical phenomena. Realising this capacity, however, implies interpreting the nature of these deposits – something highly theorised in some domains of archaeology (e.g., Bronze Age Europe; numismatics), and barely of interest in others. Pivoting around the case of the ‘hoard’ of valuable objects discovered at Begram in Afghanistan – deposited between the late 3^rd/early 4^th century CE and always interpreted as concealed for safekeeping but unluckily never recovered – I present an eclectic review of how such ‘treasure’ has been negotiated in various archaeological traditions. This includes classificatory schemes attempting to distinguish ritual (e.g., votive, funerary, without intending recovery) vs. utilitarian (e.g., temporary safekeeping) deposits, and criticisms of the validity and utility of these categories. I conclude by considering which ‘universal’ insights may emerge from these debates, and the open question of their compatibility with textually documented historical conceptions and traditions of treasure.

About the speaker

Lauren Morris is senior researcher at the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the Charles University, Prague. She began her studies of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, subsequently gaining a PhD on the Begram hoard at Munich.  She specializes in the antique period of southern Central Asia, with particular interests in economic history, the Kushan period, cultural change, interaction across Afro-Eurasia, and the intellectual history of archaeology in Central and South Asia. She is Principal Investigator of a project Rural life in a changing world: new light on economic development and inequality in Central Asia under the Kushan Empire, with fieldwork in Uzbekistan.

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