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When Prof. Markus Scholz, who teaches archaeology and the history of Roman provinces at Goethe University, returned to Bad Ems toward the end of the excavation work, he was astonished: After all, all the photos sent by his colleague Frederic Auth showed but a few pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, Scholz was ill-prepared for what he saw next: a wooden defense construction consisting of sharpened wooden stakes, designed to prevent the enemy’s approach. The martial-looking structure was intended to deter enemies from attacking the camp. Such installations – comparable, if you will, to modern barbed wire – are referenced to...

"This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations," said the researchers.During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt. Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, "Israel Shekel," "Half-Shekel," or "Quarter-Shekel." The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in...

The object found was a large lead ingot or 'pig' (about half a metre long, weighing 63 kilograms). The 'writing' reported by Mr Jones was a cast Latin inscription confirming that it was Roman and about 2,000 years old... The exploitation of Britain's natural resources was one of the reasons cited by Roman authors for the invasion of Britain by the Emperor Claudius in AD 43... Lead ore or galena contains silver as well as lead, and both were valuable commodities for the Romans. Less than a hundred lead ingots of this type are known from the mines of Roman...

The deepest layers of carbon-14 dated ice found in the Col du Dôme of the Mont Blanc glacier in the French Alps provide a record of atmospheric conditions in the ancient Roman era. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the study, led by an international team and coordinated by a CNRS scientist at the Institute for Geosciences and Environmental Research (IGE)(CNRS/IRD/UGA/Grenoble INP)*, reveals significant atmospheric pollution from heavy metals: the presence of lead and antimony (detected in ancient alpine ice for the first time here) is linked to mining activity and lead and silver production by the ancient Romans, well before...

Researchers led by Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen returned to a farmer’s field in northeastern Scotland where a hand pin, chain, and spiral bangle all made of silver in the fourth or fifth centuries A.D. had been found more than 170 years ago. According to a report in Live Science, on the second day of the investigation, the team, which had the assistance of metal detectorists, found three Roman silver coins, a silver strap end, a piece of a silver bracelet, and pieces of hack silver. Over a period of 18 months, they gathered a total of 100...

Canadian scientists probing the metal content of coins exchanged thousands of years ago in Mediterranean Europe have discovered a new way to map ancient trade patterns, to retrace economic ups and downs at the dawn of Western Civilization and even to shed new light on the collapse of the Roman Empire. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton have launched a research project in which nuclear radiation is used to identify changes in metal content among ancient Greek and Roman coins held in a world-class collection amassed at the university since the 1940s... A joint project between the university's classics department...

Dutch archaeologists have recently completed the rescue excavation of a unique treasure hoard dating to the beginning of the 5th century AD, from a field in Limburg... According to the Byzantine historian Zosimus, Constantine III tried to re-secure the entire Roman Rhine frontier against Germanic invaders... The historians Orosius and Zosimus tells us that Constantine III solved the problem of the invading Germanic groups by liberal use of the money bag along with developing close alliances to Germanic warlords on both sides of the Rhine... The Echt hoard would therefore have belonged to a Germanic officer in Roman service –...

A team of archaeologists from the University of Exeter has found a Roman fort dating from the 1st Century AD in fields in Cornwall. Several items of pottery have been excavated and a furnace which may have been used to smelt minerals. Researchers said the find at Calstock, close to a silver mine, could show for the first time the Romans' interest in exploiting Cornish minerals. Very little is known so far about the Roman occupation in Cornwall... Archaeologists became interested in the site when they found references in medieval documents to the smelting of silver "at the old castle"...

In 64 A.D., in a naïve attempt to deceive the populace, Nero decreased the silver content in the coins and made silver and gold coins slightly smaller ... central planners have been clipping coins and devaluing the The People’s hard-earned currency for at least two thousand years. The Roman Emperor Nero of course devalued the Roman currency for the first time in the Empire’s history. What was it that gave both the Roman and Ottoman Empires the audacity to plunder the purchasing power of their people? After 200 years of operating as an independent bank, what made the British Empire...

Italian archaeologists have unearthed 24 beautifully preserved bronze statues in Tuscany believed to date back to ancient Roman times. The statues were discovered under the muddy ruins of an ancient bathhouse in San Casciano dei Bagni, a hilltop town in the Siena province, about 160km (100 miles) north of the capital Rome. Depicting Hygieia, Apollo and other Greco-Roman gods, the figures are said to be around 2,300 years old. One expert said the find could "rewrite history". Most of the statues - which were found submerged beneath the baths alongside around 6,000 bronze, silver and gold coins - date to...

Three metal detector fans have discovered a Roman hoard worth tens of thousands of pounds while spending the weekend camping in south-west England.The group were staying in a field near the ancient village of Pewsey, in Wiltshire, when they found the treasure trove a mere six paces from where they had pitched their tent.Robert Abbott, 53, switched on his device after breakfast one morning and very quickly found something.At first the computer shop owner from Essex, near London, uncovered only discarded metal tent pegs. But he dug a little deeper and hidden below was a valuable silver Roman coin called...

The quarter shekel coin, dated to 69 AD, is one of only four of its kind known to exist It took nearly 20 years of dogged detective work and a trail which crossed continents before the case of the missing $1m relic could be closed. "A cherished piece of history [is] finally going home," said a US official at a ceremony marking the occasion. That piece of history is a small silver coin rich in symbolism, minted during a Jewish revolt nearly 2,000 years ago. Looted in Israel in 2002, it was eventually tracked down, seized and is being returned...

Daniel Lüdin... swept his metal detector across the ground, a “strong signal” suddenly emitted from the machine... he was shocked by what he found: a clay pot filled with 1,290 coins.In accordance with proper archaeological protocol, Lüdin reburied the pot and contacted local experts, who dated the cache of coins to the fourth century... At the time, Switzerland was part of the Roman Empire.Based on the coins’ composition—copper alloy and traces of silver... was simply a large stack of “small change,” equal to about two months of earnings for a soldier, per the statement. Collectively, the coins amounted to as...

New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analyzed coins of the period and revealed a debasement [sic] of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 percent copper five years later...The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behavior...

Archaeologists working on an excavation at Grange Farm, near Gillingham, discovered 15 kilograms of litharge—a material associated with the extraction of silver from other metals. This is the largest amount ever found on a British Roman site and greatly exceeds the amount that archaeologists would normally expect to find on a rural settlement such as that at Grange Farm, suggesting that the refining of silver was taking place on an industrial scale.However, the excavation team did not unearth any signs of the infrastructure that could have supported the size of operation required to produce this amount of material...The team was...

Historical artifacts were discovered in eight tombs dating back to the fourth century in present-day northern Turkey, officials announced on Friday.The tombs were uncovered during roadway expansion efforts in the Kurtulus district of Ordu, a province on Turkey's Black Sea coast, with teams from the local museums directorate launching excavations for the artifacts' urgent recovery.Officials added that many human and animal remains, including skeletons, were found in the tombs, along with pieces of jewelry made of gold, sardine stone, silver, glass, and bronze.Pieces of a glass bottle and beads were also found in one of the tombs, they said.The findings...

...the sources of silver used to produce Roman coinage have largely been used up, making it difficult to determine which deposits Roman miners exploited...The Iberian Peninsula, which includes modern Spain and Portugal, is host to world-class silver deposits, especially in the southern region. These deposits contain galena, which is the main ore of lead and an important source of silver. To extract silver, the galena ore is smelted and purified, with refined silver for coin minting able to reach a purity of over 95%.To track the source of Roman silver, the team of researchers analyzed the silver and lead compositions...

More than 5,500 silver coins buried by a river about 1,800 years ago are now in the hands of archaeologists, following the hoard's discovery in Augsburg, Germany.At the time of the coins' burial, the Roman Empire was in full swing, with its coinage reaching all corners of its territory and beyond.These coins "are denarii, the standard silver denomination during the 1st-early 3rd century [A.D.]," Stefan Krmnicek, a professor of ancient numismatics (the study of coins) at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told Live Science in an email.Archaeologists found the hoard earlier this year in an old riverbed. But though...