Resources and the Roman Imperial economy: The metallurgy of the denarius as a source of information on the exploitation of natural resources and the political and economic context

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Klein
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 409029802

300 years after the coin reform of Augustus, the coinage system of the Early and Middle Empire had collapsed. The production of bronze denominations had been virtually suspended, the silver content of the denarius sunk to less than 1%. What were the reasons for this catastrophic development?This application is intended to secure the necessary funding for the laboratory work for a separately financed doctoral dissertation on the fineness and origin of the metal employed for Roman denarii from the 1st to the mid-3rd century AD. Following ground-breaking work by L. Cope and D. Walker in the 1970s on the metallurgy of the Roman Imperial silver coinage, recent and extensive work by K. Butcher and M. Ponting has confirmed the general phenomena previously observed, but provided a more detailed, and in some cases revised picture. However, many questions remain unaddressed and unanswered; there are significant gaps in the coverage of the coinage by Butcher and Ponting, in particular for the Julio-Claudian period prior to the reform of Nero; and since Butcher and Ponting concentrated on chemical fingerprinting of the coins, only a limited number of lead isotope analyses were carried out, which are important for provenancing the metal sources employed.These points are to be directly addressed in the doctoral dissertation. The data from the analyses will provide new information on the exploitation of natural resources by the Imperial administration, and the geographical, political and technological constraints to which it was subject. This information will be placed in a broader political and economic context in order to further our understanding of the aims and reasons behind the debasement of the denarius, in particular of episodes such as the short-lived reform of Domitian or the debasement of Septimius Severus; of the extent to which old coinage was recycled; as well as of Imperial financial and economic policy, its possibilities and limits in general.The project will also investigate whether existing analytical methods such as lead isotopes can be employed in the analysis of the silver coinage of the 3rd century in order to source the material used, when the level of silver in the coinage had sunk so significantly.The main method to be employed is lead isotope analysis, supplemented by chemical fingerprinting, but also by less frequently used isotopic analyses such as iron and copper. The coins for analysis will be carefully chosen to complement previous studies such as those of K. Butcher and M. Ponting, to verify their results and, above all, to fill individual gaps in their data series, and to address new questions their work pose.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. David Wigg-Wolf