March 6, 2014 – What mints produced the coins from various epochs that have been discovered in Great Britain? Did they ever find any coin from a mint in the Middle East from the time of Septimius Severus? And if so, where? And what other coins were found with this coin? To questions like this a new programme presented by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) can give answers.
In collaboration with the company Tracemedia and with financial support from a fund, the PAS was able to make all their some 300,000 finding items visually accessible. The user is given many possibilities to limit their search as for epochs, rulers, material and so on. The impact of these decisions is immediately visible on a map. Coins can be shown in connection with their mints. Through the single PAS database entries the exact finding spots may be shown although only with a precision of a point within a 1 km square. And even that expects that the landowner on whose estate the coins were found was not contrary to indicating this information.
So, once again the PAS shows how to direct the searching activities of amateurs while making the results available to everybody.
Daniel Pett from the British Museum presents the new programme ‘Lost Change’ in the British Museum blog.
You should try out Lost Change by yourself in order to get an idea of its mighty features!