Ancient Coins Research Articles

Correlative analysis of advanced microscopy techniques for metallography and corrosion microstructures of bronze phoenician coins

Correlative microscopy stands out for its ability to concurrently acquire and analyze various data types in a multimodal and multiscale environment, enabling precise localization of specific areas within samples and enhancing the accuracy and relevance of analyses. This approach showed promise in revealing the metallurgical history of ancient coins. This article focused on composition, microstructure, and manufacturing process of Phoenician-Punic copper-based alloy coins (5th–4th century BCE). The four coins studied by correlative light and electron microscopy, μ-Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray Microscopy exhibited notable differences in elemental composition and microstructures. These variations are attributed to their origin from casting, followed by striking, and subsequent recrystallization due to a more intricate corrosion process.

Documentation of a Numismatic Collection from the Period of the Roman Empire Using the Photogrammetry Method

The article describes the possibilities of 3D documentation of historical monuments by photogrammetry on a selected sample of coins. It applies this selected method, verifies its suitability and describes some other digitization methods. It also contains a basic description of the methodology of creating 3D models of ancient coins.

From coin to 3D face sculpture portraits in the round of Roman emperors

Representing historical figures on visual media has always been a crucial aspect of political communication in the ancient world, as it is in modern society. A great example comes from ancient Rome, when the emperor’s portraits were serially replicated on visual media to disseminate his image across the countries ruled by the Romans and to assert the power and authority that he embodied by making him universally recognizable. In particular, one of the most common media through which ancient Romans spread the imperial image was coinage, which showed a bi-dimensional projection of his portrait on the very low relief produced by the impression of the coin-die. In this work, we propose a new method that uses a multi-modal 2D and 3D approach to reconstruct the full portrait in the round of Roman emperors from their images adopted on ancient coins. A well-defined pipeline is introduced from the digitization of coins using 3D scanning techniques to the estimation of the 3D model of the portrait represented by a polygonal mesh. A morphable model trained on real 3D faces is exploited to infer the morphological (i.e., geometric) characteristics of the Roman emperor from the contours extracted from a coin portrait using a model fitting procedure. We present examples of face reconstruction of different emperors from coins produced in Rome as well as in the imperial provinces, which sometimes showed local variations of the official portraits centrally designed.

“Unseen God” or “Giver of Wealth”?: Image of Hades on Ancient Coins

Hades belonged to the deities whose attention mortals did not aspire to attract. However, in archaeological sources there is a sufficient amount of evidence about the monetisation of the deity’s cult. Among all the stories about Hades, the story about the abduction of Persephone became the most famous on the periphery of the ancient world (in the Northern Black Sea region or in Asia Minor). Moreover, the city of Nysa in the province of Asia made this plot one of the most widespread in its coinage and culture in general, because it positioned itself as the place where this abduction took place. Thus, the figure of Hades was institutionalised in various coin types, which is extremely interesting.

INVESTIGATION OF SILVER FORGERIES OF ANCIENT COINS: CASE STUDY OF SILVER COINS OF PARTHIA (ORODES II AND PHRAATES VI)

The investigation into the elemental composition and microstructural characteristics of ancient coins gives valuable information to researchers which greatly aid in the detection of counterfeits. This research aim is analysis encompasses an examination of major and trace elements present in the coins of Parthia, to identify forgery techniques utilizing the PIXE technique. The results show the elements Cl, Ca, Fe, Cu, Ag, Au, Pb, Sn, and Zn were identified and according to the ratio Ag/ Cu, can be said that the Parthia period occasionally used forged silver-plated coins. The elemental composition of silver coins of Orodes II and Phraates IV observes these coins are made with plating silver and affixed to the core utilizing a silver-copper eutectic layer, while the core itself consists of copper, and quantities of tin (Sn) were detected which may have been intentionally added for metallurgical, political, or historical reasons.

Low-complexity arrays of patch signature for efficient ancient coin retrieval

Low-complexity arrays of patch signature for efficient ancient coin retrieval

Preparing a microemulsion-loaded hydrogel for cleaning wall paintings and coins

Removing unwanted materials, such as organic coatings and soil, from the cultural relic surface is a complex and significant task in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Microemulsion-loaded gel can effectively and safely remove those organic coatings and soil. Here, we employed a simple solvent exchange strategy to prepare a microemulsion-loaded polyvinyl alcohol/polyethyleneimine (PVA/PEI) hydrogel. First, PVA and PEI were dissolved into DMSO to form a gel. Then, the gel was immersed into a microemulsion composed of water, ethyl acetate, propylene carbonate, sodium dodecyl sulfate, and 1-pentanol to exchange DMSO. Microemulsion-loaded PVA/PEI hydrogel can be synthesized by completely substituting DMSO. To investigate the microstructure, rheological properties, and mechanical properties of the gel, scanning electron microscopy, a rheometer, and a universal testing machine were used, respectively. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) analysis was conducted to explore the synthesis mechanism and confirm the successful loading of microemulsion within the microemulsion-loaded PVA/PEI hydrogel. Furthermore, FT-IR, a depth-of-field microscope, and a glossmeter were utilized to evaluate the cleaning efficiency of the microemulsion-loaded PVA/PEI hydrogel for removing animal glue and soil from the surfaces of cultural relics. Moreover, an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer was used to analyze the element component of the ancient coin. The application results showed that the microemulsion-loaded PVA/PEI hydrogel can effectively remove animal glue from an ancient wall painting surface. Moreover, it is capable of removing soil from an ancient coin surface as well, which helped to confirm the age of the coin. This offers a novel method to prepare microemulsion-loaded hydrogel and demonstrates great potential in the cleaning for cultural heritage.

To A More Precise Placement in Space and Time of the Hoard Discovery from Grăniceri, Arad County

The synthesis publications dedicated to ancient coin finds made on the current territory of Romania mention the hoard from Grăniceri (Arad County), consisting of 120 tetradrachms of Thasos. It’s a discovery made by chance that happened in the 19th century. So far, the exact location and date of discovery of this hoard have not been established with any precision. However, by correlating the information from primary sources with the maps of that time and the data provided by Lidar scans, we believe that we have identified where this discovery was made. Starting from here, we have developed a discussion of how these deposits can be interpreted, referring to the theories widely accepted by scientists. At the same time, for the basins of the Crişul Alb and Crişul Negru rivers (only their segments in Arad county) we have drawn up a map of the hoards finds dating back to the 2nd century BC – 1st century AD in relation to the contemporary settlements.

A CNN-ASSISTED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR ANCIENT WORLD COIN CLASSIFICATION

The work is devoted to solving the problem of automating the classification of coins from the ancient world. The purpose of the work is to create a neural network model and a system for the classification of ancient coins. The object of research is photographs of coins from ancient cities in the polis of the northern Black Sea region. The subject of research is the process of coin classification. A system architecture, a neural network architecture, and an application for the classification of ancient coins are proposed. The results of the system's operation are demonstrated, and the quality of network training is evaluated. The models were trained using self-generated data samples consisting of sets of color images of coins (200 by 200 resolution) of several types and images of coins that play the role of all other coins and should be classified as not belonging to a given class. The relationship between the ratio of class coins to other coins was also found. For obverse sample 783-7831, 100% accuracy in ten epochs was achieved when the ratio between samples was 1:1, with ratios of 1:4 and 1:7, 30 epochs were required to achieve 100% accuracy. The following technologies were used to implement the Web system: a framework for Python – Django for writing the server part; a JavaScript programming language for writing the user part of the system; and a jQuery library to improve the interaction of the user part with the user. For interaction between the user and the server part of the applications, the AJAX request technology was used, which allows data to be transferred to the server part imperceptibly for the user without reloading the page. Sqlite3 was used as the main application database.

Development of a multi-isotopic (Pb, Fe, Cu) analytical protocol in gold matrices for ancient coin provenance studies

Lead, copper and iron isotopes are precisely measured for the first time in gold matrices owing to an adapted purification protocol that allows the tracing of gold sources from archaeological and historical contexts.

Correction: Development of a multi-isotopic (Pb, Fe, Cu) analytical protocol in gold matrices for ancient coin provenance studies

Correction for ‘Development of a multi-isotopic (Pb, Fe, Cu) analytical protocol in gold matrices for ancient coin provenance studies’ by Louise de Palaminy et al., J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2024, https://doi.org/10.1039/d3ja00312d.

THE KASPERIVTSI 1908 HOARD OF ROMAN DENARII AND KAROL WILHELM HALAMA: SOME NOTES

In 1908, a hoard of Roman denarii was found near the village of Kasperivtsi (Chortkivs'kyy Region). From the very beginning, there have been a number of misunderstandings and inaccuracies around it, which persist to this day. One of the persons who published information about the find was Karol Wilhelm Halama aka Hallama (1871–1948), a postal clerk from Żywiec, a small town in western Lesser Poland. Halama collected antique coins, which he donated to the National Museum in Krakow in 1946. As a member of the Numismatic Society in Vienna, he published short texts in the journals issued by the society: Monatsblatt der Numismatischen Gesellschaft in Wien and Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Münz- und Medaillenkunde. In one of the notes, he corrected the incorrect information about the Kasperivtsi find. However, his contribution to research on this hoard was forgotten. The hoard itself was scattered and today only seven coins out of its entirety are availlable, stored in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum in Łódź. This article attempts to organize information about the composition of the hoard and the fate of the coins included in it.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ АНТИКВАРНОГО МЕТОДА "ВЕТХОГО ЛЮБОПЫТНИКА" УИЛЬЯМА КЕМДЕНА В ЦЕРКОВНО-СЛАВЯНСКОМ ПЕРЕВОДЕ "БРИТАНИИ"

The article analyses the interpretation of particularities of the antiquarian method that was very popular among the European researchers of the 16th century in the Church Slavonic translation of W. Camden's "Britannia". Created by the English antiquary this treatise was included in the fourth volume of the most famous world geographical atlas - the "New Atlas" of Blaeu. This volume was translated very accurately into Church Slavonic by Isaiah, the Little Russian scribe of the Chudov Monastery in the 1650s-1661 upon the orders of Patriarch Nikon. The examples of archaeology, numismatics and epigraphies were examined. These auxiliary disciplines were just beginning to form in Europe in the late 16th - early 17th centuries. For the Russian state of the same period, it is not necessary to talk about a similar level of development of these areas of historical thought, so Isaiah acted as a pioneer, interpreting, for example, information about ancient coins, archaeological finds, that is, artefacts.

In the Eye of the Lion: Iconological Observations on Frontal Depictions of Lions on Ancient Coins

This article provides an overview of the most important coin types depicting frontal lions from the Greek Archaic period to the first century BC. The spear-biting lions are not included in this paper as they form the subject of a separate study. Starting from the ancient written tradition, explanations are offered based on the effect of the lion’s gaze, which is repeatedly mentioned in ancient texts. With the addition of the respective reverses and modes of representation, it is possible to identify references to religious cults: Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hera and Heracles. But rulers also used frontal lion images for specific purposes. To express the solar aspect of Apollo, frontality seemed the most appropriate. A particularly close connection between the lion and Loxías has been demonstrated for Rhegion. The example of Samos shows that an autocrat could choose the emblem of a “frontal lion’s head” – probably also to suggest solar qualities. Under Achaemenid influence however, the lion regularly became the victim of the ruler – albeit a particularly dangerous and fearsome one, which was emphasised through its frontality. The same goes for Lysimachus, whose choice of image is astonishingly close to Pliny’s reflex, which focuses entirely on the lion’s sight. It is also shown that lion masks are often associated with the deeds of Heracles, which also gave rise to other coin images in which the use of frontality brought special nuances of meaning, for example the illustration of special effort or a narrative connection between two coin images. In one case, a frontal lion leaping out of a rectangle was associated with the cult of Athena. Another group of frontal lions may have had an apotropaic-demonic character, mainly conveyed by the eyes fixed on the observer. Here we can see a connection with the Gorgoneion. As for the frequent image of devouring lions, a biblical source suggests that the animals were particularly irritable and dangerous during this process. Finally, it was recommended that lions and leopards should be carefully separated, with leopards being particularly suitable for depicting the ‘man-destroying’ god Dionysus in frontal perspective.

Making money out of making money in ancient Athens

AbstractThe observed weights of ancient coins are usually less than the nominal “ideal” weights of the coin standards to which they belong because state authorities took a fee—“seigniorage”—for minting coins to cover costs and to make a profit. The basis for calculating the amount taken by the state and the way it administered manufacture are not well understood. Here we analyze the weights of 1344 of the earliest coins of Athens (c. 550–479 bce). We reveal a parabolic relationship between the cost of the silver and the weights of the coins whereby a progressively higher proportion was taken as the denomination decreased, meaning that the smaller the coin, the larger was the proportion of silver taken from it. There was tight control of the minting process and mathematical sophistication in precisely adjusting the silver content from the first introduction of coinage. It also made minting a profitable business. Changes in minting practice can be detected with the introduction of the Athenian “owl” coins, when the percentage of silver taken by the state increased and the spread of weights widened to include coins weighing more than the nominal weight. The latter indicates a significant shift toward monetization of the economy.

(Digital Presentation) Application of Plasma Cleaning in the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage

The chemical reactivity of metals at inappropriate climate conditions can be a threat to metallic cultural heritage. It is known that oxygen plays an important role in the corrosion and decay of metallic objects. Oxide formation is among the most prevalent destructive phenomena in this field. The metallic archaeological objects lose their original shape due to the oxide layer that develops on their surface. Among physical-mechanical and chemical techniques used in the past to remove the oxide layer from these antiques, Cold plasma technology has been proposed as a novel safe method to successfully achieve this goal. In a plasma medium, which can be formed by an electrical discharge, chemically reactive species exhibit a unique behavior in response to the injected gas type, electrical and chemical parameters, etc. This special behavior aids in achieving the user's goal through physicochemical phenomena. In this study, Hydrogen gas, with its reductive character, in the plasma phase provides free radicals of Hydrogen reacting to the copper oxide layer on ancient coins. As a result of this plasma reduction reaction, separation of the oxide layer from the copper surface is achievable. This phenomenon which is called Plasma cleaning, is a type of etching. Plasma cleaning does not destroy surface structure and information contained within metallic heritage artifacts. The feasibility of this non-destructive cleaning method has been investigated for the preservation and restoration of ancient copper coins dating back roughly 300 years ago. These ancient copper coins were exposed to a cold hydrogen plasma for 120 minutes. Results show that Tenorite and Spertiniite formed on the surface of coins have been successfully removed. The black color of Tenorite, a type of copper oxide, gives a dark appearance to copper coins' surface, and Spertitnite, as a copper hydroxide, exhibits a blue-green color on copper coins. According to the results, after 2 hours of hydrogen plasma treatment, not only these green spots have been removed, but also the dark appearance of the entire surface of the coin has been reduced. This amount of clearance is a good result considering the untreated area. Moreover, Figure 1 illustrates the coin's surface using SEM (A) before and (B) after Hydrogen plasma treatment. These images were obtained at a 200x magnification from the surface. In contrast to Figure 1(A), which had heavily polluted surfaces, case B's dark pollution has been removed, reducing the amount of darkness on the coin's surface. This study shows the efficacy of Plasma cleaning for the preservation and restoration of ancient copper coins. Figure 1

О некоторых образах архаических монет Ионии и Малой Азии на скифских зооморфных бронзовых бляхах

The article studies the influence of zoomorphic images on the archaic coinage of Ionia and Asia Minor on the Scythian animal style. The borrowing of ancient coin images and designs by Scythians has long been the subject of a separate study. However, as a rule, the attention of researchers was limited to a circle of prestigious things made of precious metals mainly in the second half of the 5 th—4 th centuries BC. As it will be shown in this article, the influence of the Ionian and Asia Minor coinage on the formation of images of the Scythian animal style can be traced at least from the turn of the 6 th—5 th centuries BC and manifests itself not only in prestigious items, but also in quite ordinary bronze plaques, mainly decorating horse bridles. It is proved that in a number of cases, within the framework of the Scythian animal style, there was a direct borrowing of coin images and motifs (the full face of a lion, the motif of a four-fingered clawed paw, composition consisting of three boar heads). In other cases, the influence of coinage on the formation of images of the Scythian animal style seems more than likely (profile images of a cat predator and a lion, the “bird on a fish” plot). It is suggested that the influence of archaic Greek coinage on the Scythian animal style could be associated with waves of Ionian and Asia Minor migrants to the Northern Black Sea region in the second half of the 6 th—early 5 th centuries BC, or with the contacts between the Scythians, Ionians and Greeks during the Scythian-Persian war and the period immediately following it.

A Siamese Transformer Network for Zero-Shot Ancient Coin Classification.

Ancient numismatics, the study of ancient coins, has in recent years become an attractive domain for the application of computer vision and machine learning. Though rich in research problems, the predominant focus in this area to date has been on the task of attributing a coin from an image, that is of identifying its issue. This may be considered the cardinal problem in the field and it continues to challenge automatic methods. In the present paper, we address a number of limitations of previous work. Firstly, the existing methods approach the problem as a classification task. As such, they are unable to deal with classes with no or few exemplars (which would be most, given over 50,000 issues of Roman Imperial coins alone), and require retraining when exemplars of a new class become available. Hence, rather than seeking to learn a representation that distinguishes a particular class from all the others, herein we seek a representation that is overall best at distinguishing classes from one another, thus relinquishing the demand for exemplars of any specific class. This leads to our adoption of the paradigm of pairwise coin matching by issue, rather than the usual classification paradigm, and the specific solution we propose in the form of a Siamese neural network. Furthermore, while adopting deep learning, motivated by its successes in the field and its unchallenged superiority over classical computer vision approaches, we also seek to leverage the advantages that transformers have over the previously employed convolutional neural networks, and in particular their non-local attention mechanisms, which ought to be particularly useful in ancient coin analysis by associating semantically but not visually related distal elements of a coin's design. Evaluated on a large data corpus of 14,820 images and 7605 issues, using transfer learning and only a small training set of 542 images of 24 issues, our Double Siamese ViT model is shown to surpass the state of the art by a large margin, achieving an overall accuracy of 81%. Moreover, our further investigation of the results shows that the majority of the method's errors are unrelated to the intrinsic aspects of the algorithm itself, but are rather a consequence of unclean data, which is a problem that can be easily addressed in practice by simple pre-processing and quality checking.

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Construction and recognition of acoustic ID of ancient coins based on deep learning of artificial intelligence for audio signals

In the field of cultural heritage protection, it is significant to establish a reliable ID (identifier) for valuable cultural and artistic items. At present, the identification of ancient cultural relics is mainly based on image information, such as pictures, 3D (three-dimensional) scanning, X-ray and CT (computed tomography) data. However, in many cases, it is impossible to identify whether slight damage, partial restorations, or ancient cultural relics have been replaced by fakes by using image information. In the era of digital duplication, more reliable identity information is urgently needed. The main technical challenge of an acoustic analysis system for ancient coins based on artificial intelligence technology is to find a non-destructive, fast and accurate identification method for ancient cultural relics. The recognition method includes two main modules: the artificial audio data sampling device and deep learning. In addition, this paper has completed the analysis of the vibration spectrum features of 19 ancient coins and realized the whole process of acoustic ID construction. The open-source platform Easy DL was used to analyze the multidimensional vibration spectrum curve feature extraction and identification. This method enables audio signal signature recognition technology to be applied in the display, preservation, transaction and safety management of ancient coins and other cultural relics.