Coins and Medals 150th anniversary conference paper

1. Distributing the wealth
Knowledge transfer in numismatics
Daniel Pett
dpett@britishmuseum.org / @portableant
finds.org.uk
Coins & Medals 150th Anniversary Conference 18.2.2011

2. Numismatic data banks

3. World wide web….

4. NUMIDAT

5. OAI – PMH: UK databases

6. Build your own collection
15 minute coin repository build
• Import data via OAI-PMH into
Omeka opensource CMS
• Not many coin resource OAI
endpoints available

7. NUDS – Numismatic Database Standard
• NUDS is a set of suggested field
names for recording numismatic
information in a column-oriented
database.
• It is designed to capture information
as it currently exists in databases
deployed by museums and collectors
in “real world” situations.
• It is flexible in that it can represent
objects for which only very generic
information is known or objects that
have been described in detail.
• It does not mandate a set of required
fields.
• Was created at an AHRC workshop
here at the British Museum

8. Innovation
 Multi period
 Multiple object types
 Heavy reliance on public
donating their
information for research
 Integrates social media
and 3rd party technology
 Multiple extraction
methods for integration
externally

9. Portable Antiquities Scheme data
Broad period Quantity
Iron Age 42,217 IRON AGE
Greek & Roman 168 GREEK AND ROMAN
PROVINCIAL
Roman 163,657 * ROMAN
Byzantine 94 BYZANTINE
Early Medieval 2,242 EARLY MEDIEVAL
Medieval 27,075
MEDIEVAL
Post Medieval 19,864
POST MEDIEVAL
Modern 171
MODERN
Unknown 396
UNKNOWN
Total 255,784
Percentage 37.6% are coins
* S. Moorhead informs me that this figure exceeds Reece’s 1991 corpus of site finds by 10,000

10. Measuring engagement
PAS web use 2010
Metric Volume
Visits 371,308
Page views 4,233,094
Visitors 210,592
Pages per visit 11.4
PAS people statistics
Metric Volume
Registered users 2,580
Contributors 18,606
Research projects 229
Total objects 680,273

11. Public & professional recording

12. High resolution images

13. All coins recorded

14. Isle of Wight coins

15. CCI vs PAS data - Overlap

16. Comparing IARCW vs PAS

17. Venetian soldino find spots
Since Adam Daubney won the Jeffrey May award in 2010 the first
instances of the Doges Dandelo and Foscari have been recorded.

18. P. Walton PhD research [AHRC]
Key Outcomes
• When did Republican coins arrive in Britain –
pre or post Conquest? Conclusion being that the
overwhelming majority were first century
military losses.
• Where, when and by whom were Claudian
copies used? Conclusion being military use at
first but continued use by wider population into
2nd century AD.
• Where is ‘C’ mint in the reigns of Carausius and
Allectus? Conclusion is we don’t know as
coinage circulates far too quickly and widely to
use mint marks as a way of locating the mint.
• Is 4th century a period of decline in Roman
Britain? Can chart shrinkage in coin use inwards
throughout 4th century...
• Transformed understanding of coin use and loss
in the Isle of Wight: located 30 new
archaeological ‘sites’ using clusters of coin
evidence.
• Piercebridge coins: established that looking at
the treatment of coinage (cutting, bending,
scratching) can provide just as much information
about site function (particularly of votive sites)
as Reece analysis.

19. Roman coin guides

20. Early Medieval rulers
Find spots directly from database
Abstract & image from dbpedia (wikipedia)
Examples recorded by the Scheme’s staff

21. Linked drop downs
Denomination
Roman coins
Issuer
Reverse type Mint Reece period Rep. moneyer
Category
All Medieval coin
periods
Issuer
Type Denomination Mint Moneyer

22. Drop downs drive knowledge pages
These dropdown lists have been
derived from various sources
including EMC, CCI, RIC etc.

23. And search engine
Eliminate errors in search
queries by only allowing
the available options.

24. Ancient World linked data
• Data bank of ancient
place names
• Link to these common
identifiers
• All talking about the
same place with an
authoritative source

25. Nomisma linked data model

26. Disseminate via social media

27. Image resource

28. Facebook & Twitter

29. Wikipedia seeding
Enabled by releasing content and data under a Creative Commons licence

30. Low visibility
Search for either numismatics or coins produces poor visibility of links to
museums. Perhaps this can be addressed by the Money & Museums network
that C&M is working on.

31. High visibility
Guide position on Google
1. Roman – 2nd out of 1.25million
2. Early Medieval – 2nd out of 350K
3. Medieval – 1st out of 340K
4. Greek & Roman – 1st out of 62.5K
5. Post Medieval – 1st out of 300K
6. Byzantine – 1st out of 62.6K
7. Iron Age – 1st out of 280K

32. Search optimised?

33. Analytical performance
Unusual length of visit
 Search term: iron age coins lincolnshire
 Pages viewed: 186.00
 Time spent viewing: 2 hours 26 minutes

34. The end.
Visit our website : www.finds.org.uk
Contact me: dpett@britishmuseum.org
Twitter: @portableant