It was recently brought to my attention by Bennet Hiibner, the ANS’s Director of Information Technology, who was perusing an online coin discussion forum and who without a background in ancient history or numismatics successfully identified a Roman coin posted in the forum using OCRE’s identification tool. One underutilized feature of OCRE is the coin identification tool. Users can easily search by legends and keywords and peruse galleries of images to figure out what Roman coin they are looking at. With the advent of Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE) database, a joint project of the American Numismatic Society and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University, identifying Roman imperial coins generally has become even easier without the need to thumb through the pages of RIC and flip back-and-forth to look at plates. Ein Bestimmungsbuch für schlecht erhaltene Münzen (Graz, 1961). A page from Brück’s Die Spätrömische Kupferprägung. Ein Bestimmungsbuch für schlecht erhaltene Münzen(Graz, 1961) is a helpful guide it provides line drawings of various late Roman reverse types and matches those with different rulers, mints, and legends, to help point users to various attributions and date ranges (Fig. Guido Brück’s book, Die Spätrömische Kupferprägung. It can sometimes feel like a Rorschach test. Particularly with worn and often poorly struck late Roman coins, identifying the reverse type can also be difficult, as one turns the coin in the light in an attempt to discern what is there. Of course, if Constantine himself can be identified on the obverse, the coins date to 335–337 CE, and if one of his sons appears as Augustus on the obverse, they date to 337–340 CE. For many recurrent late Roman types at a site, where much of the coin or the mintmark is illegible, one quickly develops the ability to recognize reverse types immediately and to attribute the coin to the date range for when the reverse type was in use.įor example, if all that can be clearly discerned on a coin is the two-soldiers-flanking-one-standard reverse, which was struck toward the end of Constantine’s reign and the beginning of that of his sons, then it can be attributed to at least 335–340 CE (Fig. The task became somewhat easier with PDF scans of relevant reference works and online databases that can aid in coin identification, such as CoinArchives. Twenty years ago, identifying coins on a site meant packing up relevant RIC volumes for the Roman coins most likely to be encountered and taking good photographs of any other coins that could not be identified on-site. In excavations, it is important to attribute coins correctly, as a single coin find can be pivotal in understanding the history of a place.

For example, in my fieldwork in Israel, we have unearthed Roman, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Nabatean, Hasmonean, Herodian, Byzantine, Crusader, Islamic, and modern coins. The task can be even more difficult for aspiring field numismatists, as excavation coins are not always well-preserved and there is sometimes a variety of material from different cultures or periods. But, at the end of the day, there is no substitute for looking at different coins, becoming intimately familiar with the reference works and online resources, and building up hundreds or even thousands of hours of experience to become adept at coin identification. At archaeological field schools and in the classroom, numismatists provide some guidance and host practicums. Although fundamental to our discipline, one of the most difficult skills to teach aspiring Roman numismatists is how to identify coins.

Identify roman coins