ROMAN PROVINCIAL COINAGE ONLINE

About this research project

Coin minted at Abydus Ashmolean

Coin minted at Abydus (north-west Turkey) in AD 177-180, depicting the myth of Hero & Leander.

Roman coinage provides a major resource for historians and archaeologists, both of whom require a reliable standard typology. The Roman Provincial Coinage initiative complements the now complete Roman Imperial Coinage publication series. The aim is to provide a standard treatment of all provincial coinage of the Roman Empire from its beginning in 44 BC to its end in AD 296/7 and to make this freely available online. The website was launched in 2005. It currently includes more than 100,000 coins. Significant redevelopments in recent years, with one new volume added every year since 2014, have transformed the site into the leading reference work on this subject. From its launch the site has also been open to crowdsourced information, allowing members of the public to contribute new data, and has received new material from hundreds of scholars, researchers and collectors from all over the world.

Research aims

Coins are mass-produced objects and as such, from a historical point of view, it is important not to confine consideration to the collection of any one museum. This project is based on the ten most important and accessible collections in the world and on all published material. It represents the first systematic treatment of the civic coinage at the height of the Roman empire, and will have great importance for the study of cultural, religious, political, economic and administrative history at both a local and an imperial level. The site is a vital resource for the international research community. The material is also relevant to a wide range of taught courses and is used not just to discover Roman coinage but also to engage with the complexity of the Roman Empire. The site uses a linked-web approach: when possible, linking the coins to the web page of the museum which owns the actual object, and so encouraging scholars and students to discover related material in museums around the world.

Project start

2005

Project team

Professor Chris Howgego, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Dr Jerome Mairat, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Dr Volker Heuchert, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Research Connections

The project is based on the ten most important and accessible collections in the world:

Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Nationalmuseet, Copenhangen
Hunterian Museum, Glasgow
British Museum, London
Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich
American Numismatic Society, New York
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Outputs

Roman Provincial Coinage online resource

 

Publications

Howgego, C., Heuchert, V. and Burnett, A. (eds.), (2005) 'Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces'.

Published volumes of Roman Provincial Coinage:

I. From the death of Caesar to the death of Vitellius (44 BC–AD 69) (1992; reprinted with corrections in 1998 and 2006)
Burnett, A. (London); Amandry, M. (Paris); Ripollès, P. P. (Valencia)

II. Vespasian to Domitian (AD 69–96) (1999)
Burnett, A. (London); Amandry, M. (Paris); Carradice, I. (St Andrews)

III. Nerva to Hadrian (AD 96–138) (2015)
Amandry, M. (Paris); Burnett, A. (London); in collaboration with Mairat, J. (Oxford); with contributions by Metcalf, W. (New Haven), Bricault, L. (Toulouse) and Blet-Lemarquand, M. (Orléans)

VII. Gordian I to Gordian III (AD 238–44) (2006: Province of Asia)
Spoerri Butcher, M. (Warwick)

IX. Trajan Decius to Uranius Antoninus (AD 249–54) (2016)
Hostein, A. (Paris); Mairat, J. (Oxford); commenced by Levante, E. (Paris)