How do Coins Survive?

-Kristin Graeper

Coins that survive to us serve the very important purpose of acting as historical sources. It is fortunate, indeed, that so many should now be in our possession, millennia later. There are certain characteristics of coins that have enabled them to survive at very high rates, which also make them useful to us in our studies of the past. The most important characteristic that has increased the survival rate of coins is their inherent value, which has led people to exercise care with them. By definition, a coin holds some value, which comes from the fact that "a coin is a piece of money made of metal which conforms to a standard and bears a design," (Howgego, 1). In addition, the physical characteristics of coins, namely that they are very small metal objects, also enhances their survival rate.

Since coins do hold value, people pay attention to them and worry about their security. Of the coins that survive to us, many are found in hoards. A coin hoard can be defined as "a group of coins of whose discovery " for example, in a purse or other container " makes it clear that the hoard was deliberately buried in a group," (Crawford, 191). Sometimes the components of a hoard allow us to understand why the hoard was put together in the first place. For example, a hoard with a very assorted selection of coins may be the property of a piratical owner (Crawford, 198). Some hoarders seem to have chosen the coins based on their intrinsic value, whereas others chose particular coins that they seem to have preferred, like the Romans who selected coins based on which emperor was represented (Crawford, 199). Some literary sources, such as Seneca, indicate that some of these hoards may have simply been the savings account of a person (Crawford, 199). However, most hoards were buried out of fear of some imminent turmoil, usually the result of warfare or political strife. Levels of settlement destruction around the coins often attest to the fact that these threats were, in fact, carried out. Another reason for hoarding was the demonetization of money. However, some scholars find it hard to believe that people would just leave a pile of money - devalued, but still a large collection of metal - in hiding simply because they didn"t think it was worth the endeavor of moving it (Crawford, 201).

There are certain problems associated with the study of coin hoards. One issue is that the coins in a hoard cannot necessarily be grouped together around the same date of minting. Since these coins traveled around the Mediterranean, often for many years, hoards often contain coins from diverse places and from quite a large span of time. When one has two hoards to consider, the evidence can be used for absolute dating, which is a date given of "so many years BC or AD, or so many years before the present, usually expressed as "so many years ago"" (Biers, 7). If an archaeologist is fortunate, a hoard will contain some coins which are dated or which allow inferences to be made about their dates, or the site will have a known terminus ante quem , a distinguishing date before which an artifact or artifacts must have existed. In addition to providing evidence for absolute dating, hoards can also assist us in providing a relative dating system for a sequence of issues. This can be done by examining the common issues in both hoards and then seeing which hoard contains the more recent issues and if the common issues in the other hoard are more worn (Crawford, 196). A relative chronology "dates the object in relation to other objects and assigns it a "relative date,"" (Biers, 6). Although relative dating is useful for creating patterns, it does not tell us how old the object is, so absolute dating can be more useful.

While most of our excavated coins have been found in hoards, this is not the only vehicle to finding ancient money. Since coins are made out of metal, originally electrum, and later, gold, silver, copper, bronze, and brass, they are pretty indestructible and have survived also from just having been misplaced or lost in the ground. Buried in the ground, they do not come near the high temperatures that would be necessary for them to decompose. However, some metals have survived to us in better shape than others have. Generally, gold is better preserved than silver, which is preserved better than bronze. Many aes (bronze) coins develop a patina, the greenish hue of corrosion, which sometimes makes the coins more difficult to read. However, the corrosion and the general condition of the coins are also helpful tools to the historian in helping to determine how old the coin may be and how long it was in circulation. However, it is not just the fact that coins are made of metal which has helped them to survive to us, but also that they are small and so have a better chance than other metal objects from the same period of surviving in entirety. In addition, since coins have generally remained the same since their incorporation into use in civilization, anyone who might have come across the coins at a future time would probably have recognized that they were of some value and thus would have taken care of them.

After archaeologists unearth the coins, it is then the difficult job of the classicist to determine whether the coin is genuine or one of many types of forgeries. There are coins that were forged in ancient times, and most of the time these coins have a bronze inside and are plated with a silver exterior, and they often mismatch obverses and reverses (Crawford, 188). An incorrect classification of the coin as genuine may lead to incorrect historical assumptions. There are also forgeries from the Renaissance period, when these coins first started to come into interest. Some of these forgeries are completely false and others are copies of real coins, which can persuade us to think that some coins were more popular than they really were (Crawford, 188). Although the classicist has a very important job in identifying and classifying these coin types, their contribution to historical studies would not be possible without the work of the archaeologist.

Works Cited

Biers, William R. Art, Artefacts & Chronology in Classical Archaeology. London: Routledge, 1992.

Crawford, Michael "Numismatics." Sources for Ancient History. Ed. Michael Crawford,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 185-233.

Grant, Michael The Visible Past: Greek and Roman History from Archaeology 1960-1990.

New York: Charles Scribner"s Sons, 1990.

Howgego, Christopher Ancient History from Coins. London: Routledge, 1995.