Silver coinage formed the backbone of state finance in Classical antiquity. The fineness and quality of a coinage is often taken by historians to be a comment on the fiscal health of the issuing state, yet very little is really known about its fineness and chemical composition, and many of the existing analyses are inadequate to answer key questions. The aim of the RACOM project is to examine financial and monetary strategies from c.150 BCE to a major coin reform in c. 64 CE – a period that witnessed the creation of an overarching currency for the Mediterranean world and increasing monetisation – by providing a detailed and reliable set of analyses of the chemical composition of all major silver coinages of the period, obtained by taking samples from deep within the coins.

In the fourth year of the project, as the analytical section of the RACOM 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 raises the international profile of the project and pays homage to the city from which many of the coinages studied originated.

The conference will be a hybrid event - delegates are welcome to attend in person or on-line via zoom (restricted to 100 participants)

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED

For those attending in person refreshments and lunch will be provided at the BSR on both days.

Speakers include:

• RACOM Team members Kevin Butcher, Matthew Ponting, Eleni Papaefthymiou and Jonathan Wood, and:
• Andrew Burnett (Summing-up)
• François de Callataÿ (Royal coinages of Asia)
• Lucia Carbone (Cistophori of Asia)
• Frédérique Duyrat (Aradus)
• Catherine Grandjean (Greece)
• Panagiotis Iossif (Seleucids)
• Sophia Kremydi (Macedonia)
• Andrew Meadows (Tetradrachms and other silver of Asia)
• Julien Olivier and Thomas Faucher (Ptolemies)
• Charles Parisot-Sillon (Republican coinage of the second century BCE)
• Alice Sharpless and Liv Yarrow (Debasement of the 80s BCE)
• Arnaud Suspène and Maryse Blet-Lemarquand (Denarii of the 30s BCE)
• Bernhard Woytek (Republican coinage of the 40s BCE)

FULL PROGRAMME CAN BE FOUND HERE

For all enquiries contact: Maxine Haddleton, RACOM Project Administrator m.haddleton@warwick.ac.uk