Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: ritten by Sam Moorhead, researcher of the British Museum, the book "A History of Roman Coinage in Britain", provides a chronological overview of Roman coinage from Republican period to the early 5 th century AD, emphasis on Roman coinage used in Britain.The work emanates from a very attractive series of 22 articles written for Treasure Hunting, according to Sam Moorhead, between 2008 and 2011.Using the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) the author provides us with an introduction to the history of each period and then outlines the coinage.The book offers the readers, illustration of 800 coins, and attractively displays images of these coins in a manner which is not often found in many previous books.The 800 coins are illustrated in over 1,600 color pictures, with obverse and reverse for each coin.Writing as an expert on Roman coinage, the author tries to make the subject accessible to anyone with a level of interest.The 22 articles written in the Treasure Hunters magazine have eased Sam Moorhead's work in writing this book, obviously adding new elements researched in the course of his activity.The language is accessible, and the text includes constant useful explanations.The pictures are spectacular, as it is stated above.The picture of each coin, obverse and reverse, is joined by information which is relevant in the spirit of the text.We also find items that enable a more accurate comprehension of the text, e.g. the statistical and graphical tables and information of the text, which could be useful to students and researchers in their new research projects.The originality of this book also consists in the manner in which the author succeeds to synthetize a long historical period, providing information and explanations easy to understand in only 224 pages.The figures offer an obvious advantage, as well as those over 30 colored maps.Obviously, there are some disadvantages in the manner of writing, although the framing in the historical period is excellent, the shallowness of the political explanations may mislead the reader.The author does not intend a historical analysis of the period, but a presentation of the coins and their framing within a historical and political context as precisely as possible.Nevertheless, there are historical events which are easily debated, the tetrarchy being one of them.Throughout the reading, one may notice the coherence of the text and the accuracy of the information used.The book consists of 28 chapters and Glossary of terms.At the end of the book the author provides a bibliographical list section, Further Reading, and further information about Archeological and Numismatic Societies.In the first chapters (I-II, pp.3-11), the author gives an introduction related to some scientific and technical elements related to coins and the method of recording the coins presented in the present book.The book's database is in chapter I (p.3), Portable Antiquities Scheme, which encourages the voluntary recording of all objects that are not considered as Treasure, mainly coins.It is the largest dataset of this kind in the world.To analyze
DOI: 10.14795/j.v1i1.19
Author: Marius Grigore Stan
Institution: Babeș-Bolyai University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2016062670