Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Frédérique Duyrat
One of the major difficulties when starting a comparative study of coins from excavations
is the absence of norms in the publications examined. There is no reference literature, no
common guidelines, and each author chooses his own rules of publication. A significant
number of authors of excavation reports are not numismatists but archaeologists who have
a good knowledge of the coins they find, but fewer of the standards of the discipline. As a
consequence, there is a very wide variety of form and content in publications of coins from
excavations.
This symposium has offered a rather wide overview of the range of possible uses of coins
from excavations, from their extraction from the earth to the reconstruction of historical
episodes, from the excavation to a GIS.
Amphipolis according to the contrasts they observe in the density of coinage found in
excavations.
4. A standardized approach to coins from excavations can also shed light on the economy,
especially concerning the monetisation of an area through a better knowledge of the use
of bronze coins, of their value (are they valuable enough to be hoarded?) versus the use
of silver, particularly silver fractions. Our knowledge of the output of bronze coins is
tightly related to what excavations provide. The Thasian example is especially interesting:
O. Picard finds very high die ratios for bronze coins from the excavations of the city,
for obverse dies compared to the number of coins found as well as for obverse dies vs
reverse dies 3. Such results, quite unusual, would probably be commoner if such careful
examination of the dies of coins from excavations were performed more frequently.
5. Finally, to standardise the publication of coins from excavations would allow mapping,
quantification, and comparison on a broader and easier scale. Sharing data would be
possible without the huge preparatory work needed today.
Formal choices can make a real difference in the clarity and use of a catalogue.
1. Numbering. The best solution is to choose a continuous numbering, from the first
coin to the end of the catalogue. The practice of providing no numbering at all must be
prohibited 5. A wide range of complicated systems has been developed. For instance, in
the publication of the excavations of Antioch and Seleucia Pieria, a catalogue number is
given to the coin types, and the total numbers of items are given in two separate columns,
one for each excavation, with totals by series and reigns 6. The tables at the end of the
volume give joint totals for the two sites. Thus, someone looking for the coins of one or
the other site must go through the catalogue making their own calculations. Moreover,
the use of bis numbers often leads to wrong results in tables.
2. Illustrations provided are often scarce, on the grounds that the items are to poorly
preserved to justify a photograph. Therefore, the reader can almost never come to his
own opinion, since he is deprived of the primary source. This raises the question of
the choice of pictures: should it consist only of the best preserved items? Or of those
essential for the dating of the stratigraphic layers? The whole corpus? Or even drawings?
3. Finally, the bibliography is often a problem. There is no complete overview of Greek
coinage in the way that Roman Imperial Coinage or Roman Provincial Coinage are now
universal references for Roman coinage. Therefore, Greek coins from excavations
are often described according to very different books or articles, or according to the
possibilities available to the person in charge of their identification.
Beyond this general context, one point must be made concerning hoards found in
excavations. They are not so numerous and it is remarkable that, on many occasions, the
publication places little or no value on the container in which it was found. It is often barely
described, or not at all.
Publication criteria
A list of the criteria to standardize the publication of coins from excavations do not need
to constitute a heavy document. They can be summarized as a series of items needed to
allow a full use of data by numismatists or other researchers.
1. General information on the excavations:
– Context; possibly list of stratigraphic layers.
– Nature of the excavated site (street, agora, temple, house, harbour, etc.).
– Total number of coins found.
– Number of illegible coins after restoration.
– Number of coins destroyed by restoration.
– Surface area excavated.
2. Necessary fields:
– Mints.
– Description of the coin (obverse and reverse type, weight, dies, axis, metal, etc.).
Legends must be noted in a Unicode font.
– Hoards: numismatic study and careful description of the container.
– Bibliographical references.
– Data specific to the site (stratigraphic layer in which coins were found, georeferencing
of the precise location of the discovery, data about the context such as pottery in the
same layer, etc.).
3. Photography
– Of the coin itself or of a plaster cast, often more legible when the coin is a corroded
bronze.
– At actual size (1/1). If enlargements are provided, they should be in addition to actual
size pictures.
– As many items as possible.
One difficult point remains the order of classification. Each archaeological site has its
own characteristics and there may be no single method to suggest. But to make each solution
reasonably manageable, some tools must be added to allow as full a use as possible of the
data. There are two main types of classification.
7 Le Rider 1965.
8 Pellerin 1763; Eckhel 1792.
9 Babelon 1914, vi.
10 Robert 1951, 89.
Some Recommendations for Publishing Coins from Excavations 301
of one of these periods will need to extract all the data from the catalogue and rebuild it
according to his needs. Thus, if this solution is preferred, an index of mints is necessary,
with chronological tables, along with an introduction explaining which geography has been
chosen, and according to which local frame.
1. Chronological, by periods – Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, etc. – as for the
excavations of Antioch 11. This requires a classification by mint in each chronological section,
with an index of mints making it possible to gather the output of those issuing through
different periods. This classification has several advantages:
– It allows an easy historical use of the catalogue.
– It provides a differentiation of the periods, but takes into account the specificities of
classification and dating of coins from excavations.
– It is enriched by an index by mint to reconstitute geographical links through periods
if needed.
Whatever the choice, the basic principles to determine a type of catalogue should be:
– To make data usable for analysis of long periods.
– To make data ready for use without having to deconstruct the catalogue.
– To allow the archaeologist to find easily the dating elements he may need, and the
historian to find points of comparison.
– Finally, commentaries and tools – maps, graphs, charts, indices – associated with the
catalogue may help extracting historical informations by mint 12.
– Indices of mints, hoards, literary sources and inscriptions are basic, useful tools. A
general conspectus as the one added to the masterful publication of the coins from the
agora of Athens by J. Kroll is an excellent way to make sure that any reader can safely
browse through the most complicated finds 13.
Conclusion
All of these suggestions apply to printed publications and do not solve the main problem.
Many excavations are run on a yearly basis, outdating the publication of the preliminary
report of the preceding year or postponing definitive publication to a final book. One
possible answer to many of the difficulties noted through this article would be the digital
publication through standardised databases communicating with each other through the
semantic web. The interest of databases is obvious:
– Easy and free access from any place with a web access.
– No limit to the number of images available in colour.
11 Waage 1952.
12 de Callataÿ 2006, 187-190 highlighted the scarcity of chronological tables in publications devoted to
coins from the Greek world when they are common for the Roman world. See particularly chart 7,
p. 188.
13 Kroll 1993.
302 Frédérique Duyrat
The École française d’Athènes has begun the discussion about creating an online database
for coins from its excavations, and at the same time we are exploring the development of a
general catalogue of Greek coins online (http://www.greekcoinage.org). The future of the
discipline undoubtedly lies there.