Experimental analysis of Roman coin minting

Historic coins are an artifact used for analysis in different research areas. This study contributes to the topic of historic coin minting. Consulting ideas from the field of experimental numismatics, an approach is proposed to evaluate minting of certain coins supported by real test samples. Therefore, a test setup is implemented for the manufacturing of coins under controlled process conditions. In this work, the main focus lies on the coin blank temperature used for striking and thus, to contribute to the controversial problem, if minting is done “cold”, “warm” or “hot”. In order to prevent confusion, a suitable definition of the terms “cold”, “warm” or “hot” with respect to the materials recrystallization temperature is given. Various test samples of copper-based material are manufactured for different process conditions and initial coin blank temperatures, ranging from ambient temperature to 900 °C. Roman coins values, Dupondii and late Roman AE coins, are conducted for a comparative analysis. All coins are evaluated and compared based on metallographic micro-sections. On the basis of the conducted test, strong indications are found for a “hot” striking process.