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[Extract] What is the future of numismatics? Will it be restricted to collecting and die studies by a shrinking number of passionate collectors and specialists, or can it offer something more? As academic historians, we see unlimited potential for coins to ‘value-add’ in numerous areas of research. The number of ongoing major digitising projects for public and private coin collections demonstrates that numismatists agree. The life work of Emeritus Professor John Melville-Jones AM, the honorand of this volume (Fig. 1), does much to illustrate the point.

International audience; The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. Here, we address this question by combining lead and silver isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage, and the Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect mixing of silver ores or silver objects with lead metal used for cupellation. The combined analysis of Ag and Pb isotopes reveal important information about the technology of smelting. The Greek world extracted Ag and Pb from associated ores, whereas, on the Iberian Peninsula, Carthaginians and Republican era Romans applied Phoenician cupellation techniques and added exotic Pb to lead-poor Ag ores. Massive silver re-cupellation is observed in Rome during the Second Punic War. After defeating the Carthaginians and the Macedonians in the late 2 nd century BCE, the Romans brought together the efficient, millennium-old techniques of silver extraction of the Phoenicians, who considered this metal a simple commodity, with the monetization of economy introduced by the Greeks.

Archaic owl tetradrachms form an important subset of our research into Early Attic coinage. This paper analyses their physical characteristics and silver content based on measurements of 424 owl tetradrachms and 81 owl obols for comparison with fractional coinage. The paper proposes that the tetradrachms were deliberately minted at their ideal standard weight and with a consistently high purity of silver to make them acceptable as an export coinage. This stood in contrast to the preceding ‘Wappenmünzen’ and contemporary fractional coinage both of which were minted primarily for use in the domestic market place. Test-cutting in antiquity appears to have been carried out as a matter of routine checking primarily by overseas end-users, rather than on suspicion of individual coins.

[Extract] In a landmark 1970 symposium organised in London, later published as Methods of Chemical and Metallurgical Investigation of Ancient Coinage (Hall and Metcalf 1972), invited scientists were asked to suggest how modern scientific techniques could be applied to numismatic problems. In particular, they were asked to explain the capabilities of their instruments and analytical methods and to provide up-to-date bibliographies. Ironically, perhaps the most startling findings announced in the symposium came from a study of Merovingian coins in the Sutton Hoo hoard using specific gravity (Kent 1972), a technique which can be traced back to Archimedes. Not all the speakers were scientists; there were also numismatists and historians discussing the implications of using information gained from scientific analysis, and exploring in some cases what they saw as deficiencies. Perhaps the most important outcome of this symposium was the momentum which led the Royal Numismatic Society to form a standing committee to further the application of scientific methods in numismatics, and the creation of a publication series in which to present current research, Metallurgy in Numismatics.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that it is the quintessential nature of humans to communicate with each other. Good communications, bad communications, miscommunications, or no communications at all have driven everything from world events to the most mundane of interactions. An awareness of a communication's context is what gives that communication efficacy. The main theme of the book is communication: how it was done, what intended message was communicated, and the relationships/identities that were established through communication between people. The context of situation is really the total environment in which a communication unfolds. Delimiting registers is neither simple nor wholly objective. Still, ancient registers are increasingly possible to articulate based on social-semiotic considerations due to the growing amount of evidence gained through archaeological excavation and, unfortunately in some cases, looting.

This paper presents fresh interpretations of 160 lead isotope analyses of Archaic Greek coins on the OXALID database based on new data for ore sources in Spain, Sardinia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey and Iran. It demonstrates that the earliest minters used far more diverse metal sources than the literary evidence suggests, and engaged in what could be described as opportunistic minting. Some currently held views on the importance of Siphnian silver, Peisistratid access to Thracian silver, the sources of Aiginetan, Thasian and Chian silver, the use of gold and tin as tracers for Siphnian and Lavrion silver, and the mixing of silver are challenged. Thoughts are offered on how archaic minting drove intensification of mining.