Coins | British Museum blog

April 26, 2013 • 9:35 am 1

Researching ‘old’ as well as ‘new’ kinds of money in West Africa

Documents from 1931-33 Sophie Mew, Project Curator, Money in Africa

I’ve been working on the Money in Africa research project to understand how coin and note currencies were introduced to the coastal regions of Africa and how their usage had spread widely by the close of the nineteenth century.

With two former British West African colonies, the Gold Coast (what is now known as Ghana) and Sierra Leone (one of the earliest British settlements on the coast), most of my research so far has been carried out at the National Archives in London, in Accra (Ghana) and in Freetown (Sierra Leone). In each place, I’ve consulted documents relating to a wide range of accounts about currencies. These included, for example, colonial despatches written by the governors of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast and sent to the Secretaries of State in London; records that were created by and filed in the Treasury department in London, as well as diaries from merchants trading to West Africa.

Documents from 1931-33, PRAAD records

One of my early finds was a series of detailed instructions for traders on an expedition to the west coast of Africa in 1796. The Governor of Freetown at the time requested that the traders gather as much information as possible to understand what it was that locals preferred to trade with, at each stage, and at what value. At the National Archives in Ghana in June 2012, I found a series of similar despatches that were distributed to District Officers in 1944. Questions related to coins and notes and what they were used for, as they sought to gather information on the preferences of “the man on the street”. Responses suggested, for example, that people who could read preferred notes while labourers preferred coins. The 1/10th shilling was used as a counter for gambling in Obuasi, and notes could be inconvenient: the “average cloth wearing African was used to carrying his money tied up in a corner of his cloth with the result that notes became crumpled and torn, got wet and became pulp.”

Inside the Sierra Leone National Archives at Fourah Bay College,

I took my first trip to Sierra Leone in January 2013 where I researched the holdings of the branch of the National Archives, located on the University Campus (Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, is the oldest university in West Africa). At the top of a treacherously steep hill overlooking the city, I consulted lists of annual stipends that the British colonial government paid to local chiefs in exchange for leasing their land, and trawled through records of fines and fees paid to the colonial police to find out what currencies people were using and when.

In conjunction with my archival research for the Money in Africa project, I was also seeking information about the use of mobile money in Sierra Leone as part of a redisplay of an exhibition panel in the Citi Money Gallery. This display panel addresses the future of money and new technologies, and is updated every six months to showcase new studies.

As I questioned members of the public in Freetown, friends I had made, and staff members of mobile money companies, I understood the wariness that people have in trusting new kinds of money and the difficulties with trying out alternative systems. What I found fascinating here was that similar justifications for the practicality of using new coins and banknotes in the nineteenth century were being repeated to me within the contexts of mobile money in Sierra Leone today.

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Find out more about the Money in Africa project

Filed under: Money in Africa, Research, Coins, Ghana, mobile money, money, National Archives, paper money, Sierra Leone

November 29, 2012 • 4:32 pm 11

The Beau Street Hoard: the end of the excavation

Beau Street Hoard excavation Julia Tubman, conservator, British Museum

My last blog post recounted the excavation of bags 5 and 6 of the Beau Street hoard, which were the two smallest bags on the edge of the large hoard. In the months since, the deconstruction of the hoard has advanced considerably: as the excavation progressed I naturally became faster and more confident in removing the coins, and am pleased to announce the end of this stage of the project. The hoard was well organised, with the coins carefully sorted into bags according to denomination and level of debasement; specialists here at the British Museum now have a fascinating mystery to interpret.

The hoard towards the end of the excavation

In total eight bags were found in the hoard, which is two more than originally identified in the x-ray. Squeezed between the larger ‘bag 2’ and the centre of the hoard were two tiny bags, the coins of which are very similar to those contained within bag 2 – small radiate coins minted by Gallienus, Claudius Gothicus and Tetricus I.

Luckily, at the end of the excavation I was able to lift the large, central moneybag (known as bag ‘4’), whole, as I had removed all of the bags of coins surrounding it. The excellent preservation of this moneybag, which weighs nearly 11 kilograms, presents us with a very exciting opportunity. Already a laser scan of the bag has been undertaken to produce a rotating three-dimensional image, and a second scan will be taken before the end of the year which will be used to produce a facsimile to go on display in Bath. These scans provide us with a lasting document of the moneybag, which will now be de-constructed and the coins cleaned.

Moneybag 4

The block was x-rayed before the excavation of the moneybags, and so the base holding the coins had to be x-rayed after the removal of the last bag, to check that there were no ‘surprise’ bags beneath those already excavated. The x-ray showed only a few coins on the periphery of the base, and so we can move towards giving a final count for the number of coins in the hoard as a whole: at the moment it looks to be around half of the original estimate of 30,000.

Now the excavation is complete, I will be fully focused on getting all of the coins cleaned so that they can be identified by numismatists, who will begin to compile an ‘Emperor count’.

We knew at the beginning of the project that this would be a short excavation, and the perfect opportunity to experiment with time-lapse photography. Before I began the excavation, a camera was positioned on a workbench above the hoard, and programmed to take a photograph of the stationary block every 10 minutes. This short video neatly captures the deconstruction of the hoard, and makes for a fantastic record of the excavation.

On Friday 30 November, Stephen Clews from the Roman Baths, British Museum curators Richard Abdy and Eleanor Ghey, and I will be discussing the story of the Beau Street Hoard so far in a lecture at the British Museum.

Find out more about the Beau Street hoard and the Roman Baths Museum fund-raising campaign.

If you would like to leave a comment click on the title

Filed under: Beau Street Hoard, Conservation, Research, Coins, excavation, hoard, Roman coins

November 27, 2012 • 9:47 am 2

Spending all over the world…

Coins from each of the 193 countries recognised by the United Nations arranged in a spiral Thomas Hockenhull and Ben Alsop, curators, British Museum

The British Museum collects and displays objects from across the world, and every year we are visited by millions of people from many different countries. In one section of the new Citi Money Gallery we had a simple plan to display at least one object from every country, and we decided that we could only achieve this within the available space by using coins.

Looking at the list of UN-recognised countries we began to search the extensive collection of the Department of Coins and Medals. Where possible we planned to exhibit coins, of the national currency, rather than a sub-denomination. The UK currency, for example, is represented by a pound coin and not a penny; the Euro by a euro coin and not a cent, and so on.

Coins from around the world arranged in a spiral

For the purposes of display, it was suggested that a spiral would be a really visually arresting design. Beginning with a two Afghani coin of Afghanistan and finishing with a Zimbabwean dollar, the coins spiral alphabetically by country from the centre to the outer edge of the display panel. There are 192 coins in total, with one space representing South Sudan, which issues banknotes but is yet to issue coins, following its independence in 2011.

A glance at the spiral provides for some interesting observations. For instance, not all member states of the United Nations have their own currencies. Some are part of monetary unions, such as the Bank of Central African States, while others, such as Micronesia, use the money of a much larger neighbour, the U.S. dollar.

The symbols and images countries choose to use on their coinage can be very different, each offering a different idea of nationhood. Individual countries may choose to depict a person, animal or symbols which are very particular to their society and history. Monetary unions on the other hand need to find a unifying factor which helps to group the various countries together using one image.

We are keen to display the most recent coins possible and welcome the donation of newer coins to help us keep the display as up to date as we can.

We also created an online version: why not see how many you recognise?

The Money Gallery is supported by Citi

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Filed under: Collection, Money Gallery, Coins, currency, money

June 7, 2012 • 8:49 am 5

The Beau Street Hoard: excavation progress

Julia Tubman, conservator, British Museum

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the Beau Street Hoard is not just one huge jumbled mass of coins, but actually at least six separate bags. My excavation plan is to remove these coins bag by bag, to preserve the groupings (which are potentially very significant), and give us a clearer view of the size and shape of each bag.

I had been concerned that the coins might have concreted together to such an extent that identifying separate bags would be very difficult during the excavation, but (fingers crossed!) thus far the removal of individual bags has progressed remarkably smoothly. I have managed to retrieve two whole bags of coins. I have numbered these bags five and six, and they are the two smallest bags at the northern end of the block in the x-ray (five being the smallest).

The block, after the removal of bags 5 and 6

We were excited to see that bag six almost exclusively contained denarii (the smaller coins with a high silver content discussed in Eleanor’s blog post last week), suggesting that the coins might have been bagged by denomination. Of the approximately 3,000 coins I excavated of this bag, I have cleaned around 1,000, and thus far the latest coins we have date to the third century AD.

There are actually a very small number of coins older than the third century contained within the bag: one coin was minted during Otho’s very short reign (AD 69), and an even older one, worn almost flat, minted at the end of the Roman Republic by Mark Antony (just prior to the battle of Actium in 31 BC).

This means that some of the coins were centuries old at the time of the final deposition of the hoard. As I’m cleaning the coins bag by bag in the order excavated, I haven’t yet got round to cleaning the coins kept in bag five, but thus far these all appear to be radiates.

A very worn coin minted by Mark Antony, circa 31 BC

As you can see in the photographs, it is quite easy to tell where one bag ends and another begins. The orientation of the coins themselves and the very bright blue corrosion helps a lot, but there are also other markers. The bags that held the coins would have been organic in nature (made from either an animal or plant product).My guess would be leather as they would have to be strong enough to hold large numbers of coins. Unfortunately, even organic material which has been treated and processed to form objects doesn’t always survive easily in Britain, which is why most of our surviving artefacts are made from stone, ceramic or metal. With this in mind, I knew that any piece of bag that might have survived would be in very poor condition, and I was prepared to look for scant pieces of evidence preserved in the corrosion generated by the coins.

Denarius bearing the emperor Septimius Severus, AD 193-211

Happily though, I think that I have found fragments of leather (see the light brown material loosely attached to the coins), exactly where I know the bags would have been. The leather is obviously very degraded, and as the fibre network has broken up, the leather has shrunken and split resulting in the flaky incoherent material we see today. I have taken some samples of this material, and hopefully my identification of this will be confirmed by a specialist soon.

The next stage of the excavation- the removal of bag 3

The next stage of the excavation- the removal of bag 2

After three weeks I now have a much better understanding of the size and shape of the hoard. There were no more coins beneath bags five and six, but the x-rays taken through the side suggest this is not the case throughout the rest of the block – we suspect there might be more bags of coins beneath the six already identified.

The area excavated thus far shows that the floor of the cist is obviously not even, but seems to have been dug in a rough pit-like way. As yet I have found no evidence of any kind of wooden box that might have held all of the bags, and as I have found pieces of tile pressed up against the coins, I actually doubt that there ever was.

Given the way in which the bags have been piled (I do not want to destabilise the central bags by removing their supports), and to get an idea of what the bags of coins in the middle of the block look like, I will now begin excavating ‘bag two’ at the southern end of the block. I’m sure there will be more exciting developments to report.

Find out more about the Beau Street hoard and the Roman Baths Museum fund-raising campaign.

If you would like to leave a comment click on the title

Filed under: Archaeology, Beau Street Hoard, Conservation, Coins, hoard, Roman baths, Romans

May 25, 2012 • 1:57 pm 3

The Beau Street Hoard: what’s in the box?

Eleanor Ghey, project curator, British Museum

Hoards of Roman coins from later in the third century AD are the most common sort of coin hoards we see at the British Museum but the Beau Street Hoard is very unusual. When I saw the X-ray of the hoard I was very excited to see what looked like clearly separate bags of coins deposited in a group – normally coins are found in a pot or in a hole in the ground together in one lump. Here we have at least six (and probably more) groups of coins – several hoards in one! It was even more exciting to learn that it was going to be possible for my colleague Julia Tubman to isolate the groups.

It raises all sorts of questions. Do the bags contain the same sorts of coins or different ones? Do they each contain the same amount in Roman money or in weight of metal? Are they all coins that were circulating at the same date or are they deposits of coins from different time-periods gathered together at a later date for re-burial?

An X-radiograph of the soil block before conservation. © University of Southampton

An X-radiograph of the soil block before conservation taken at the Imaging Centre in the University of Southampton’s Department of Engineering Sciences. © University of Southampton

It is already possible to start to speculate about the contents of the hoard from the few coins that have been removed from the block (although it may still hold surprises). The coins are mostly of the denomination known as a ‘radiate’ (from the spiky crown the emperor wears on the obverse (front) of the coin).

A silver radiate of Gordian III from the hoard

This type of coin first appears in the early third century AD and at the time was of a value double that of the denarius (the main silver coin in the earlier years of the Roman Empire). Initially, like the denarius this was a silver coin. Gradually over time the silver content of the radiate was reduced, until (by the 270s AD) they were almost entirely base metal (copper alloy) and became smaller in size.

The first coins Julia removed from the block were large and silvery in appearance (once cleaned) and came mostly from the first half of the third century AD. The earliest coin was a denarius of the emperor Septimius Severus (ruled AD 193-211) and the latest were coins of the emperor Gallienus and his wife, Salonina, dated to the AD 260s. This would be fairly typical for the contents of a hoard buried in the AD 260s.

A silver denarius of Septimius Severus (AD 193-211) from the British Museum collection

However, when the hoard was first discovered, a sample of coins taken from another area of the block was quite different in nature. These were the smaller, more coppery radiates of the AD 270s (the most common type of coins we find in hoards from the 270s to 290s). This suggests that we may be dealing with bags containing different groups of coins, possibly gathered together at different times or sorted before burial.

Was this a secure store for bags of money that was added to gradually by one or more people over a fairly long period of time? It seems like an official store of money, organised into bags and purposely concealed in a place designed for that purpose. It was certainly a large amount of money (although we don’t have data for the later third century, pay scales for legionary soldiers in the AD 230s suggest they would have received about two and a half of these coins as a day’s wage) and it could have been looked after by an individual with authority.

It is rare to find hoards in Roman town centres. Perhaps it belonged to a local business in what was a busy town centre (deposited in a safe place in the way we leave money at the bank today). Why was it left for the archaeologists to find and not recovered by its owner?

Was there any connection with the nearby temple and sacred spring? We know that temples had treasuries; they may have periodically emptied out some of the coins thrown into the spring.

We are hoping that results from the archaeological excavation of the findspot will shed further light on this puzzle.

Find out more about the Beau Street hoard and the Roman Baths Museum fund-raising campaign.

If you would like to leave a comment click on the title

Filed under: Archaeology, Beau Street Hoard, Conservation, Coins, hoard, Roman baths, Romans

May 18, 2012 • 3:41 pm 5

The Beau Street Hoard: excavating Roman treasure, one coin at a time

Julia Tubman, conservator, British Museum

In November 2007, during a routine archaeological excavation in advance of building work in Beau Street, Bath (a stone’s throw from the famous Roman Baths themselves), archaeologists came upon what was clearly a very large number of coins contained within a cist (a stone-lined box). Upon further excavation, they quickly came to realise they were looking at one of the largest coin hoards found in the UK, representing quite a tumultuous time in Roman Britain – about AD 270.

Some of the coins from the hoard during the initial excavation © Cotswold Archaeology

When groups of coins that appear to be over 300 years old are found, they must be reported to the local coroner (according to the Treasure Act 1996). The coins enter what we call the ‘Treasure Process’ where, if necessary for identification, they will be cleaned in preparation for their formal declaration as Treasure and the property of the Crown, or eventual valuation. Usually this occurs at the British Museum, or in the case of Welsh Treasure cases, the National Museum of Wales.

The hoard was lifted in a single soil block © Cotswold Archaeology

In order to preserve its shape and context, the archaeologists cut around the hoard and lifted it in a soil block. As a metals conservator at the British Museum, my job is to excavate the coins from the soil and clean them up. The initial excavation should take about six weeks and during that time I will be regularly adding to this blog with updates of my work as it progresses. Colleagues from curatorial departments and our science team who are involved with the project will also contribute as the hoard gradually reveals its story.

The hoard in its soil block when it arrived in the conservation lab at the British Museum

The coins are currently held together by soil and metallic corrosion. They are blue and green in colour indicating the corrosion of a copper metal, which would have been used as a base alloy for the coins. Interestingly, within this copper corrosion is actually a layer of silver that was plated over the copper during the manufacture of the coins.

The coins have also maintained the shape of the cist they were contained within, as the soil and corrosion has concreted together. Looking more closely, we can even see that there are groups of coins within the hoard; which is because this large hoard appears to be composed of six individual smaller hoards.

We had an idea that this could be the case because in December last year Dr. Mavrogordato, from the Imaging Centre in the University of Southampton’s Department of Engineering Sciences, kindly took x-rays of the block. The resulting images show what look to be ‘bags’ of coins. We don’t know whether the bags themselves have survived (they could have been made of an organic material such as textile or leather), but the corroded coins have kept the shape of their containers and I will be looking for evidence of them.

The cleaning process is fine and detailed work

As my job will involve excavating the hoard, knowing that there are individual bags of coins gives me a very good starting point as it means I can deconstruct the soil block bag by bag. It will be very interesting to see if the coins were bagged together for a particular reason; for example, if they were grouped by emperor or denomination.

I’ve cleaned a few loose coins already and, after stripping away the copper corrosion, I’ve found some very impressive silver surfaces (nicer than we had previously hoped!) Given the large number of coins in the soil block, I’m hoping to be able to clean as many coins as possible using chemicals such as formic acid, rather than by hand using a scalpel. I have 18 months to complete this project, so time is of the essence.

The hoard in May 2012 in the conservation lab, excavation underway.

Initial estimates put the number of coins at around 30,000. After having excavated the block a little since then, guesses about the maximum number of coins in the hoard have decreased and estimates vary between everyone looking at it. Readers of the blog are welcome to suggest their own figures – I say no more than 22,000 coins, what do you think?

Removing the tough shell of the copper corrosion layer is important not just to find shiny surfaces but also to find the detail on the coins needed for identification by my colleagues in the Coins and Medals department, Eleanor Ghey and Richard Abdy (who will be blogging about the significance of the find next week). At this early stage in the project, I’m only cleaning the coins so that they can be identified: I’m not cleaning them for display, by completely removing all the corrosion or soil; that would require more time.

Some of the coins after being cleaned

When looking at Roman coins, specialists will be hoping to identify features on the ‘obverse’ (side bearing the bust of an emperor or an important relative) and the ‘reverse’ (side bearing representations of deities, animals, and other important Roman symbols). The subjects depicted on Roman coins varied according to emperor and coins of more than one emperor could be in circulation at any given time. On both sides, revealing enough of the ‘legend’ (the writing around the edge of the coin) is important, especially where the figure in the centre is very corroded or worn. Eleanor and Richard will also be looking closely for any mint marks on the coins (usually on the reverse) which indicate where in the empire the coin was struck, so I’ll have to be very careful when cleaning to reveal as much detail as possible.

Coins identified thus far have shown a real mix of the many Roman emperors of the third century AD (it was such a politically unstable time that many of them only got to reign a few years): Septimius Severus (AD 193-211), Gordian III (AD 238-249), Philip I (AD 244-249), Decius (AD 249-251), Trebonianus Gallus (AD 251-253), Aemilian (AD 253), Valerian I (AD 253-260), Gallienus (AD 253-268) and Postumus (AD 260- 268).

The Roman Baths Museum hopes to purchase the hoard and eventually display it to the public. It’s fantastic to know where the hoard might ultimately end up, and I’m working closely with curator Stephen Clews at the Roman Baths.

Find out more about the Beau Street hoard and the Roman Baths Museum fund-raising campaign.

If you would like to leave a comment click on the title

Filed under: Archaeology, Beau Street Hoard, Conservation, Coins, hoard, Roman baths, Roman emperors, Romans

May 14, 2012 • 3:17 pm 2

Pinning it down: the installation of the Money Gallery

Amanda Gregory, Senior Museum Assistant, British Museum

I manage the team of four Museum Assistants in the Department of Coins and Medals, and we are responsible for all aspects of practical collections care, which includes exhibition installation, loans, gallery maintenance, documentation and supervision of the Study Room, where any interested visitor can examine objects from our collection of over one million coins, medals, banknotes, badges and tokens.

The Citi Money Gallery installation is by far the biggest project I have ever dealt with, and one of the biggest challenges has been the schedule. In any gallery refurbishment, the objects are always installed last, after all the building, decoration and case refurbishment has been completed. This is to ensure that our collection material, particularly sensitive metal, is not adversely affected by fumes given off by paints and varnishes, a process known as “off-gassing”. The opening date is fixed, so if the initial building works overrun, the period we have to install the objects is squeezed.

Some money boxes ready to be installed in the gallery

We begin installing the first of over a thousand objects this week, and have three weeks to complete the task. In the meantime we have been laying out all of the panels for the wall cases and pinning the objects. As we have 48 panels to pin in a small department overflowing with numismatists, horizontal surfaces are at a premium.

Underwear with a concealed pocket to store cash

As well as familiar objects like coins, medals, banknotes and tokens, we have had to tackle more unusual items such as a Barbie cash register, a beer-can shaped money box, and perhaps the most bizarre of all, a pair of lacy ladies’ pants with a concealed pocket to store cash. My colleague Henry nobly took up the challenge of pinning this item, which inevitably made him the butt of many lame jokes. Moments of levity like this, together with the plentiful supply of home-baked cake provided by a kindly curatorial colleague, have kept our spirits up during this challenging time.

The Money Gallery project is supported by Citi and opens in June 2012.

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Filed under: Collection, Money Gallery, banknotes, Coins

June 30, 2011 • 1:43 pm 2

Making a new Money gallery at the British Museum

Catherine Eagleton, British Museum

Chinese Ming banknote, AD 1375

The Money gallery at the British Museum opened 14 years ago, and was at the time a new way of displaying coins and medals. It represented a new way of thinking about the history of money, and changed the way museums around the world told this global story.

Now, a new partnership between Citi and the British Museum means we are able to redisplay the gallery, make changes to the design and content of the displays, and take advantage of new knowledge and new ideas in museology and monetary history.

We will be building on the results of an evaluation of the current Money gallery that has been done over the past few years. This gives us some clear pointers for how it can be clarified and updated, and we have already started a programme of consultation with key audiences to find out what they would like to see the new gallery containing, and what questions they have about money and its history.

Penny defaced by suffragettes, AD 1903. Crown copyright

The gallery will use money as a lens through which to look at the history of the world, as well as showing the different forms and functions money has taken and had around the world in the last 3,000 years or so. The challenge for me as the lead curator on the project is to work out how to edit a complex global story down so that it can be told in a single room. But here I am lucky to be able to draw on the expertise of my subject-specialist colleagues.

Gold coin of Abd al-Malik, probably made in Syria, AH 77 / AD 696-7

Throughout the coming year, members of the project team will be tracking the progress of this exciting project, here on the blog, right up to the opening in June 2012.

I’ll post something about once a month and, in between, there will be contributions from other people on how the project looks from their point of view.

We will be writing about (among other things) evaluation, object selection, text writing, design, conservation, and the tricky business of how you remove thousands of small objects from display and keep track of where they all are while the gallery works are in progress in the first few months of 2012.

The Money Gallery project is supported by Citi and opens in June 2012.

Filed under: Collection, Money Gallery, banknotes, Coins, credit cards, history of money, money

April 18, 2011 • 4:14 pm 4

Unearthing the story of the Hackney Hoard

Ian Richardson, Portable Antiquities and Treasure, British Museum

Ian Richardson holds up one of the gold coins. © Portable Antiquities Scheme

On 18 April 2011, the Coroner for Inner St Pancras (London) concluded an inquest into the ‘Hackney Hoard‘ of 80 gold American double eagle coins.

The coins had been found buried in a residential back garden and it was for the coroner to decide if they qualified as ‘Treasure‘ and were the property of the Crown.

As a group of precious metal objects deliberately hidden with the intention of being recovered at a later date, the coins met most of the criteria for Treasure, but in a surprise twist, the family of the original owner of the coins came forward to claim them successfully.

The coins were minted between 1854 and 1913. © Portable Antiquities Scheme

The court heard how Mr Martin Sulzbacher, a German Jew, had fled Nazi Germany with his wealth and settled in London in 1938.

When Mr Sulzbacher was interned as an ‘enemy alien’ in 1940 and sent to Australia, his family, fearing an imminent German invasion of Britain, buried his coins in the back garden of their Hackney property. Tragically, they perished in the Blitz and the property was destroyed.

When Mr Sulzbacher was allowed to return home, he was unable to locate the coins amid the rubble and destruction. 70 years later, they were found by accident as the residents dug a frog pond for their garden.

The coins were found wrapped in greaseproof paper, in a jar. © Portable Antiquities Scheme

Mr Sulzbacher passed away in 1981 but his surviving relations were made aware of this recent discovery, and came forward to claim the coins. The coroner determined that the coins were not Treasure because the Sulzbacher family had sufficiently supported their claim. The Sulzbachers graciously gave permission for the coins to be displayed at the British Museum for a week following the inquest.

But how did the British Museum become involved in this historical mystery in the first place?

The answer lies with one of the newest and smallest departments in the Museum, Portable Antiquities and Treasure. The coins of the Hackney Hoard had been discovered by residents who reported them to an archaeologist working for the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).

The entire hoard. © Portable Antiquities Scheme

The PAS is a network of specialists called Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs) based at museums and universities throughout England and Wales who record finds of archaeological objects made by individuals in those countries.

The Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure coordinates the PAS and runs the online database where this information is stored and made accessible to researchers, students, and the general public. The department also performs much of the administration of the Treasure Act 1996 by keeping a registry of all the finds of potential Treasure made every year, and helping to ensure that the most important of those finds are acquired by public museums.

Each coin is a $20, known as a 'Double-Eagle'. © Portable Antiquities Scheme

In the case of the Hackney Hoard, the Finds Liaison Officer to whom the discovery was reported worked with the Department of Coins and Medals to write a report on the coins for the coroner, and produced the information for the database record.

The hoard is a totally fascinating find. Most of the finds recorded by the PAS (over 90,000 last year) and reported as potential Treasure (850 last year) are older than 300 years old, and represent a vast array of object types and coins from prehistoric times through the period of Romano-British settlement and into the middle ages.

If you would like to leave a comment click on the title

Filed under: Archaeology, Portable Antiquities and Treasure, Coins, Hackney Hoard, Portable Antiquities Scheme, Treasure

British Museum blog

Researching ‘old’ as well as ‘new’ kinds of money in West Africa

The Beau Street Hoard: the end of the excavation

Spending all over the world…

The Beau Street Hoard: excavation progress

The Beau Street Hoard: what’s in the box?

The Beau Street Hoard: excavating Roman treasure, one coin at a time

Pinning it down: the installation of the Money Gallery

Making a new Money gallery at the British Museum

Unearthing the story of the Hackney Hoard

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