The School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, announced the launch of the website: Iron Age Coins in Britain (IACB). The IACB is a digital research tool online that provides access to an edited version of the most comprehensive typology of the Iron Age coins of Britain: Ancient British Coins (ABC).
The ABC typology, published in 2010, catalogues 999 types of coins found in Britain from around the early to mid-2nd century BC through the 1st century AD. Iron Age coins provide the first written evidence from Britain and mark the end of its “prehistory”. These coins are mainly found in southern and eastern England and are a major source of information on society, trade, religious beliefs, and continental contacts, forming a crucial part of the archaeological record for Iron Age Britain.
IACB is made possible by stable numismatic identifiers and linked open data methodologies established by the Nomisma.org project, allowing any digital collection of relevant coins to be linked to this website, further populating the types with individual specimens. This digital resource will be useful for a range of interests, from finds identification to academic research.
The project to digitize the typology using the Numishare platform and Nomisma.org ontology was undertaken by a team at the University of Oxford, supported financially by the Royal Numismatic Society, the British Numismatic Society, the University of Oxford Barclay Head Fund, and private donors.
The team includes:
- Dr Courtney Nimura (Institute of Archaeology),
- Professor Chris Howgego (Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology),
- Professor Chris Gosden (Institute of Archaeology),
- Dr John Talbot (Celtic Coin Index) and
- Molly Masterson.
Ethan Gruber (American Numismatic Society) created the website and the necessary Nomisma concepts for the project. The advisory group includes: Dr Philip de Jersey (Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery), Dr Eleanor Ghey (British Museum), Dr Ian Leins (English Heritage), and Dr David Wigg-Wolf (Römisch-Germanische Kommission des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts).
Here you can browse the new online typology resource on the IACB website.
The project is related to the Celtic Coin Index Digital project.
Chris Rudd presented the Celtic Coin Index on occasion of its 50th birthday.
Two years later there was also a conference at Oxford.
