HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

390 THOMAS S. NOONANdocuments who know the many difficulties of interpreting the written wordmay view wistfully the "certainty" of archaeological and numismatic finds.Alas, no such "certainty" exists, at least not for our monetary evidence.Discrepancies exist in the accounts of far too many finds. It is not alwayspossible to determine exactly what was found, much less when and wherethe discoveries were made.A few examples can illustrate these problems with our data base. Formany years it was believed that two hoards containing German deniers fromthe reign of Henry II (1002-1024) had been found in Kiev. 31 However, arecent study maintains that no such hoards ever existed: the first hoardresulted from a confusion with an earlier denier find in Kiev, and the secondwas created through a misunderstanding of the data. 32 Hence two denierhoards from Kiev that had been referred to repeatedly for over a century arenow labeled fictitious. In 1900, a coin-treasure hoard including gold andsilver ingots became part of the collection of B. I. Khanenko. Korzukhinagave the find-spot as Divocha hora, near the village of Sakhnivka, in theKaniv county. 33 On the other hand, one of the leading contemporary specialistson early Kiev, P. P. Tolochko, indicates that this same hoard was infact found on the lands of the former St. Michael Golden-DomedMonastery. 34 Thus, we cannot be certain exactly where a hoard wasunearthed. Lesser differences also abound. The contents of many hoardsare variously reported. It is not clear, in such cases, how many ingots werepart of a hoard or exactly how many coins of a particular type were found.Many lists of particular types of coins or ingots omit finds noted on otherlists, give alternative dates of discovery for the same find, or combineseparate finds into a larger hoard.Another serious handicap is that many important finds were dispersedbefore they were studied even preliminarily. Such was the case, forinstance, with the large coin-treasure hoard found along the Khreshchatykin 1787, 35 as well as the large coin hoard uncovered in the Podil during1889. 36 Even the proper recovery of a hoard does not guarantee its preservationfor scholarly study. The hoard of almost 2,400 silver coins found inKiev during 1706 was apparently dispersed without any record while nomi-313233343536Appendix C, no. 2.Novoe v arkheologii, pp. 420 - 22.Korzukhina, Klady, p. 131, no. 127.P. P. Tolochko, Drevnii Kiev (Kiev, 1983), p. 173, no. 25.Appendix A, no. 2.Appendix A, no. 9.