Hoard
Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Bricks, Beads and Bones"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"
Meaning
A hoard is a group of valuable objects, such as jewellery, metal pieces or coins, that someone hid carefully, often in a pot, and never came back to collect. People usually threw away only broken things. Intact valuables survive mostly because they were lost or hoarded, so archaeologists find them by accident. A hoard is not a normal find from daily life. Even so, hoards show what people valued, and coin hoards show how far trade reached.
Example
All the gold jewellery found at Harappan sites came from hoards. In south India, hoards of Roman coins show that the region traded with the Roman world in the early centuries CE.
Don't confuse with
- Burial goods: these were placed with the dead on purpose and were not meant to be taken back. A hoard was hidden by its owner to keep it safe, probably to be collected later.