What makes a coin?

Writing about web page http://www.trac2013.org/?page_id=39/#minima

I have just returned from the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, where I presented a paper as part of a larger panel examining the potential information to be gained from archaeological small finds, the day-to-day material culture often uncovered on excavation. As the panel organisers, Ian Marshman and Anna Walas wrote, 'facing substantial funding cuts some museums and archives have controversially chosen to suspend enquiries or to charge for access to their collections. It seems pertinent to re-emphasise the importance of artefact-based research before we loose the facilities and skills needed to undertake it.'

How do we 'see' coins?

The panel got me to think about some of the information which gets 'lost' in the publication process, impressions and feelings one gets from handling coins, and which cannot be translated via text or black and white publication. In particular I was encouraged to think about the coins I had been identifying as part of an Australian survey project at Aquileia, a UNESCO world heritage site in Northern Italy (the forum in the town pictured right). The project (Beyond the City Walls), led by Dr. Arianna Traviglia of Macquarie University in Australia, is examining life in the 'burbs of this ancient Roman town.

Many of the coins found during the survey are typical of the type of material found during excavation - bronze coins, often very worn or poorly preserved, not the stuff that excites the interest of people outside the discipline of numismatics. But handling these finds reveals a lot about the experience of Romans in the town.

One of the pieces found was a copper half coin (pictured below), which was so worn that no design remained. These half coins are actually quite common in the Roman world, and were probably older coins cut so that they fit in with a new monetary system introduced under the emperor Augustus. Though this particular coin is very worn, the edge of the cut is sharp, suggesting that it was cut and thus still in use long after the design of the coin had worn away.

Without a design, users must have relied on other criteria to identify this coin (half an as): the distinctive copper colour, perhaps, or the size and shape. A cognitive psychology study published in 2005 noted that for modern coins, size, colour and edging are more important than design in coin discrimination. I think there is much to be said for this. How many of you can recite from memory the design of a 20 pence piece, for example? Or do you rather (as I do) rely on the distinctive shape of a 20p piece, as well as its silver colour, to identify it? The heavy wear on many coins from the ancient world suggest that colour, size and shape were also important in allowing coin users to discriminate between different denominations, and by examining pieces like that featured here, we can better understand how the Romans understood and identified their coinage, allowing us to reconstruct the brain-artefact interface.

This sort of understanding really only comes from handling the material, and I join Ian and Anna in the hope that, by identifying the sorts of information that can be gained from artefact-based research, we might win the resources and support to allow this type of work to continue in the future.

(A full article on this topic is forthcoming. For those interested in the psychology study see Horner, J. M. and Comstock, S. P. (2005) What are important visual features for coin discrimination? Applied Cognitive Psychology 19:1211-28.)

Clare Rowan : 08 Apr 2013 17:37 |  Tags: Aquileia Coins And People |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem