Wood, Jonathan R;
Ponting, Matthew;
Butcher, Kevin;
(2023)
Crisis? What crisis? Recycling of silver for Roman Republican coinage.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
, 15
(10)
, Article 147. 10.1007/s12520-023-01854-w.
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Abstract
Dated measurements of lead pollution in deep Greenland ice have become a useful proxy to monitor historical events because interruptions in lead-silver production result in fluctuations in lead emissions. However, the application of the lead emission record has not perhaps received the attention it deserves because of the difficulty in connecting macroscale events, such as wars and plagues, to their economic repercussions. For instance, although debasement of silver coinage with copper has been proposed as a reasonable response to interruptions in silver production, reductions in fineness of the silver denarius, the backbone of Roman coinage from the late third century BC, are not always coincident with decreases in lead deposited in Greenland. We propose that extensive recycling of silver that is evident in the numismatic record can better explain drops in lead emissions and, thereby, the responses to major historical events, such as warfare in the silver-producing areas of the Iberian Peninsula and southern France during the middle and late Roman Republic.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Crisis? What crisis? Recycling of silver for Roman Republican coinage |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s12520-023-01854-w |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01854-w |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > Centre for Languages and Intl Educatn |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176867 |
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