The RACOM Project is now in its fourth year! As the analytical section of the project draws to a close, the team are hosting a two-day international conference on ‘Rome and the Coinages of the Mediterranean, 150 BCE - 64 CE, with over 20 invited speakers, composed of team members, postdocs, members of our advisory panel and other experts in the field, who are collaborating with the team on interpreting the new data.
The conference is being held at the British School at Rome, with which the University of Warwick has strong links. Placing it in Rome, ITALY, raises the international profile of the project and pays homage to the city from which many of the coinages studied originated.
The full Programme is outlined HERE
The conference will be a hybrid event - delegates are welcome to attend in person or on-line via zoom - REGISTER HERE

A team led by archaeologists Kevin Butcher of the University of Warwick and Matthew Ponting of the University of Liverpool has drilled metal from the cores of coins and found evidence of a brief period of dramatic currency debasement.

In his 44BC work De Officiis, the Roman politician, philosopher and orator Cicero grumbled that in his living memory “…coinage was being tossed around, so that no one was able to know what he had”. For a long time, the senator’s claims of economic turbulence some 2100 years ago were unable to be wholly explained.

Fortunately, new archaeological and historical methods are allowing us to give tangible currency to issues like this, while more broadly providing a greater understanding of how coinage reflected the financial health of ancient Rome.