Gold coinage in the Roman world: function and production

The fundamental position of this thesis is that Roman gold coinage forms an as-yet-under-exploited evidence base for understanding the Roman economy. The work is organised into two sections. The first deals with the ‘function’ of Roman gold coinage and seeks to define how it was used by individuals and why it was used and valued in certain ways at certain times. The second section investigates the production of the aureus and the solidus. The purpose of this section is to determine the purity of the gold coinage and the geological provenance of the gold used to produce it, in order to better understand the nature of state finances over time as well as the complex system of metal extraction and supply that made the regular production of the aureus and solidus possible. Changes in how the gold coinage was valued, to what degree it was trusted and under what economic principles it operated from 50 BC to AD 450 are identified and discussed. Furthermore, existing thinking on these topics and on the velocity of the circulation of the aureus is challenged. The chapters on these topics make extensive use of a metrological database that contains over 9000 individual weights of aurei and solidi from coin hoards. This is supplemented with both major and trace element analysis of 573 Roman gold coins held by the Ashmolean Museum. This has allowed for the relatively precise characterisation of a number of distinct gold sources over time. While already historically interesting, the conclusions from the chemical data were also used to further strengthen the conclusions made on the basis of the metrological data. Most notable was the identification of a period of recycling in the late third century, which perhaps explains why aurei of this century are relatively absent in the material record