Roman Society Museum Internship Bursary 2015: British Museum Department of Coins and Medals

Roman Society Museum Internship Bursary 2015: British Museum Department of Coins and Medals

Having recently graduated with a degree from Warwick University in Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, I was looking forward to putting my knowledge to the test. Having decided to specialise in Numismatics, the study of Ancient Coinage, I was delighted and thankful that the Roman Society was able to offer me an internship at not only a Numismatic Department in a Museum, but in a Museum with one of the most complete coinage collections in the world.

My first assignment was to identify and catalogue coins from the South Petherton hoard from Sommerset, an assemblage made up of over 7000 coins. Much of the hoard had been sorted and identified, but the British Museum had been unable to sort through the 2000 coins of the Roman emperors Gallienus and Claudius II. I thus set to work on that.

I gained an immense understanding of how to properly identify a coin, from examining the bust and legend (the writing on the coin), as well as trying to identify the reverse (tail-side of a coin) image. This would often prove difficult at times: many of the images, such as those of the Roman personifications of Aequitas and Uberitas could look very similar. The so-called “Zoo types” of Gallienus proved the most troublesome, as it was often hard to differentiate between the antelopes and gazelles that appeared on his coins, and even more mysterious was the “Criocamp”, a mythological aquatic animal whose image only appears on Gallienus’ coins. Nevertheless, the experience enabled me to get my eye in, and soon I was able to identify the type with only a brief look. Such practice has been incredibly useful, as I plan to enter a numismatic career, and these 3rd Century AD radiate hoards are very common, so getting an understanding of them now has been useful.

What proved most troublesome and interesting was the inclusion of previously unknown types. I helped to identify six new types and variations that appeared within the hoard. The new types have now been added to the British Museum collection. My supervisor was delighted as he had previously feared that there would not have been enough time to look through this part of the hoard, so the Roman Society’s contribution has proved significant.

After the hoard, I then moved on to single finds. These are coins that have been found by metal detectorists, and do not seem to be part of an assemblage in the same manner as a hoard. This meant that unlike the coins of the hoard, which had all been previously sorted into whose reign they were produced in, these coins could potentially be of any emperor. There was even greater difficulty, as single finds tend to be in worse condition than those from hoards, so even identifying the face of the emperor was difficult. I began by going through the most common coins from Britain, before helping to identify the earlier coins. I am very grateful to Vincent Drost for helping me with the coins I could not identify, as well as letting me go through the finds which were in better condition: I doubt my ability could cover the really badly worn coins! Nevertheless, I managed to gain an understanding of some of the more common types in Britain, and all the coins I helped identify I uploaded to the Portable Antiquity Scheme, where they can now be viewed by the public and researchers. In total, I uploaded 81 single finds of coins to the database.

In addition to these major tasks, I attended several meetings, which gave me a good idea of how museums are run. Overall, this internship has been very beneficial. I have improved the numismatic skills I learnt during my course, and gained so many others. I now feel much more prepared for a career within the area. I hope to take up the museum’s offer, and return to volunteer there during December. I am taking an MSt course in Archaeology at Oxford this year, so I hope to have an opportunity to improve my skills further.

I would like to thank the Roman Society for allowing me such an excellent opportunity. I would also like to thank Richard Abdy, Sam Moorhead, Vincent Drost and Dario Calomino for their guidance and friendly attitude during my time there.