Rome and the East. A Study of the Chemical Composition of Roman Silver Coinage during the Reign of Septimius Severus AD 193-211

Gitler Haim, Ponting Matthew. Rome and the East. A Study of the Chemical Composition of Roman Silver Coinage during the Reign of Septimius Severus AD 193-211. In: Topoi. Orient-Occident. Supplément 8, 2007. Productions et échanges dans la Syrie grecque et romaine (Actes du colloque de Tours, juin 2003

A Rare Set of Eight Late Roman-Byzantine Brass Weights from Syria-Palestine

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Rome and the East. A Study of the Chemical Composition of Roman Silver Coinage during the Reign of Septimius Severus AD 193-211

Gitler Haim, Ponting Matthew. Rome and the East. A Study of the Chemical Composition of Roman Silver Coinage during the Reign of Septimius Severus AD 193-211. In: Topoi. Orient-Occident. Supplément 8, 2007. Productions et échanges dans la Syrie grecque et romaine (Actes du colloque de Tours, juin 2003

A new class of 'unilateral' framed Roman base metal coins?

This article deals with two orichalcum coins of the emperors Domitian and Trajan set into ancient decorative ‹uniface› frames made of a copper alloy. These most unusual «pseudo medallions» (in J.M.C. Toynbee’s terminology), published here for the first time, are clearly related to each other morphologically. They are examined in the context of hitherto known pseudo medallions and medallions of the High Principate, and the question of their function in antiquity is discussed. Both of the objects were subjected to extensive metallurgical analyses at Tel Aviv University, the results of which are published in an appendix.Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit zwei Orichalcum-Münzen der Kaiser Domitian und Trajan, die in antike Buntmetall-Fassungen eingebettet sind, die den Blick jeweils nur auf den Avers der Münzen freigeben. Diese höchst ungewöhnlichen «Pseudo-Medaillons» (in J. M. C. Toynbees Terminologie) werden hier erstmals veröffentlicht und sind morphologisch eng miteinander verwandt. Sie werden im Kontext der bisher belegten kaiserzeitlichen Pseudo-Medaillons und Medaillons untersucht, wobei auch ihr Herstellungszweck erörtert wird. Beide hier besprochenen Objekte wurden an der Universität Tel Aviv ausführlich metallurgisch untersucht; die Ergebnisse der Analysen sind als Appendix angefügt

Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant

Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel Miqne-Ekron) and combined our data with recent literature data for the same hoards plus five more (Beth Shean, Ashkelon, Tell Keisan, Tel ʿAkko, and ʿEn Ḥofez) thus covering silver from the Late Bronze Age III (c.1200 BCE) to the end of the Iron Age IIC (586 BCE). Samples were taken by applying a new minimally destructive sampling technique. Lead was extracted using anion-exchange chromatography, and Pb isotopic compositions were measured by MC-ICP-MS. Data were treated using a new clustering method to identify statistically distinct groups of data, and a convex hull was applied to identify and constrain ore sources consistent with the isotopic signature of each group. Samples were grouped by minimizing variance within isotopic clusters and maximizing variance between isotopic clusters. We found that exchanges between the Levant and the Aegean world continued at least intermittently from the Late Bronze Age through to the Iron Age III, demonstrated by the prevalence of Lavrion (Attica), Macedonia, Thrace (northern Greece), southern Gaul (southern France), and Sardinia as long-lived major silver sources. Occasional exchanges with other west Mediterranean localities found in the isotopic record demonstrate that even though the Aegean world dominated silver supply during the Iron Age, exchanges between the eastern and the western Mediterranean did not altogether cease. The mixture of silver sources within hoards and relatively low purity of silver intentionally mixed with copper and arsenic suggest long-term hoarding and irregular, limited supply during the Iron Age I

XRF Analysis of Several Groups of Electrum Coins

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White Gold: Studies in Early Electrum Coinage

This book collects the most complete, current scholarship on the history of known examples of ancient electrum coinage of the Greek world, with text, catalogue, and images

White Gold: Studies in Early Electrum Coinage

International audienceThis book collects the most complete, current scholarship on the history of known examples of ancient electrum coinage of the Greek world, with text, catalogue, and images

White Gold: Studies in Early Electrum Coinage

International audienceThis book collects the most complete, current scholarship on the history of known examples of ancient electrum coinage of the Greek world, with text, catalogue, and images

Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt

International audienceWas silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of the coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model based on Principal Component Analysis and allowing for multiple steps of bullion recycling. The first component accounts for 94-99% (typically 97-99%) of the total variance, which indicates that the data form a well-defined alignment indicative of a nearly binary mixture between two source ores referred to as 'end-members'. Isotopic evidence establishes the subordinate but pervasive practice of remelting. The strong skewness of the first principal component distribution shows that lead is dominated by the binary mixing of end-members. The geologically young end-member has high 206 Pb/ 204 Pb and is best exemplified by the Laurion ore used in Athenian coinage. With the possible exception of Ptolemaic samples, the second end-member attests to the persistence of a low-206 Pb/ 204 Pb, geologically much older, end-member. In most cases, the distributions of a further two other principal components are nearly symmetric and can be considered normal. If they represent ore sources, their very small contribution to the variance qualifies them as 'noise' (random isotopic fluctuations in the ores and analytical issues). We find that the Pb isotope ratios in the coinage issued by each minting authority are distributed as a power law. The slope of this distribution varies from one mint to another, with the steepest slopes (Corinth and Ptolemaic Egypt) indicating the predominance of freshly mined silver. The shallow slope of Macedonia demands a larger proportion of geologically old Pb. Silver supplied to the mint of Athens shifted from a mixture of high-and low-206 Pb/ 204 Pb in the late 6 th c. BCE to a predominance of unmixed high-206 Pb/ 204 Pb ore from the mines of Laurion thereafter and fell back to a mixture with intermediate Pb isotope compositions in the second half of the 4 th c. BCE. The limitation of the present study resides in the relatively small number of Pb isotope data for each mint, which, in most cases, prevents a statistically significant analysis of these data by periods. Nevertheless, the quasi-binary nature of most silver mixes stands out as a new and strong first-order, albeit somewhat counterintuitive, inference from the present data