Die-links for Vrbs Roman and associated issues / Numismatische informatie

[adrianus]

Hi all,

I thought I'd post this to show you how far imitations travelled. The dotted lines show links where I only have a general County provenance (e.g Cambridgeshire) for one or both coins in the link. Here I have taken the central point of the county as a point. The full lines are where I have findspots for both coins. This map shows how far these coins travelled.

Enjoy,

Adrianus

[batavier]

Is the centrepoint I see on the low left side a productioncentre for these coins?
It seems that most lines start or end just there.
Are the coins imitations from which you know they where produced in Great Brittain or is it also possible they were made on the contintent?
By the way, very interesting to see the spreading of the coins on your map.

Batavier

[adrianus]

Hi Batavier,
The bottom left point represents the Nether Compton hoard, a large hoard of about 20,000 coins found in 1989. A few hundred of these coins were imitations.  It was sold but I managed to acquire 160 wolf and twins imitations from the dealer who bought it and a few more recently. These provide a big collection for establishing die-links.
As for where these coins are produced  They could be British but equally some could be produced on the Continent. Many seem to travel so far that establishing the rough whereabouts of centres of production is difficult although I have some ideas for two of my mint grouping (which I will post soon).
Best wishes,
Adrianus

[Goodies]

As for where these coins are produced 

Interessant kaartje. Dus de lijnen (die-couplings) die niet met munten de grote vondst verbinden maar kleinere vondsten onderling, zou dat een aanwijzing voor de regio van oorspron kunnen zijn ? Ik zie een paar lijntjes langs de kust lopen daar..

I think the map you showed is very interesting. Now some lines (die-couplings) on your map connect finds that are also related to any coin in the central big find. These links could indicate coins that e.g. travelling along the coast (at least)

 
Lx

[adrianus]

Hi all,
This is a little out of date now I spent Monday looking at some the coins in the Maidenhatch (Berkshire, UK) , a huge hoard of imitations 330-341, after spending Saturday at the London Coin Fair  There will be a lot more links to put on when I have time to check the coins I photographed against others for die-links.
The most interesting die-link I have is three coins from the same dies, one from Nether Compton (the big group at bottom left on the map), Scarborough (high up on the North-East coast and Norfolk (East). As Lex says, these coins do travel!
Regards,
Adrian

[Goodies]

Yes.. now I begin to understand, why you call these "die-links" or couplings. You are studying these couplings in so much detail, are we investigating or even reconstructing a complete local Roman economy in Brittain between 331 and 336 ? There once was a great "philosophical" thread on this forum, where I suggested that a statistic expert should be able to tell us how many coins of a specific type one would need to find, to reconstruct the total number of coins actually circulating. Then we got lost in discussing some aspects that such a model should incoporate.. What do you think of that idea ? Would it be feasable to devise e.g. a model where one could count relative appearance of coins and reach a conclusion about the real circulation volume ?

 
Lex

[adrianus]

Hi Lex,
It can be done theoretically but there are many problems. Some researchers have tried to do this with e.g. the Roman Republican coinage. The main difficulties are:
1) How many coins did each die strike? Were all dies used until they fell apart? Were they retouched? Were all dies used for irregular coins of iron like official coins? With some types of coin, e.g. official issues in gold, only a few presentation coins might have been needed and then the dies destroyed.
2) All these clearly affect estimates of how many coins were struck per die. Eventually, let's assume we arrive at an estimate of how many coins an average die might produce. How many coins do we need per die to begin to estimate the total number of dies? Numismatists still argue on this as well.
3) Copper alloy imitations are often in a very poorly preserved state compared to silver denarii on which most die-studies have been done. This makes die-studying harder.
4) Locality. If some locally-produced imitations only circulated in a local area and that particular area has not been searched or has changed significantly since, the picture will be skewed. E.g. Parts of the Norfolk coast in Britain are nothing like they were in Roman times
5) There are so many of these coins! I have got lots of die-identities but it would require many many more coins for me to believe I am even getting near results. For example my Mint II Style 1a types - out of something like 60 coins (up to about last year) I had 57 dies! The coin populations are so large
These are only a few ideas I've thought up early this morning while half-asleep. I'm sure other readers will have plenty more to add.

Regards,

Adrianus

[Goodies]

hoi @adrianus.. numbers are big and there are a lot of coins. But sometimes, I just wonder.. if we could find a "nrs found / nrs struck ratio" for a single coin type or even a single die, this would give an indication for other coins too.

Why would this ratio be different for other coins ? Now we can think of a few reasons ( ), but the order of size would be similar. Your type of research could very well provide numbers for future research.

Thanks for enriching this forum with some of your valuable data.

@adrianus: bedankt voor het toevoegen van deze waardevolle en interessante informatie aan ons forum.

 
Lex