Aes Formatum (I hope)

[SC]

I got these two objects with a collection of mostly Roman objects from the estate of a deceased collector.  They were labelled as aes rude though the collector was not always accurate in his other labels.  Nor was he a coin collector - mostly objects.  They are certainly genuine antique bronze items.  The patinas are impeccable.  The question is if they are actually aes rude, or given that they were clearly from a circular form I guess aes formatum would be more accurate.  Anyway, are they early coinage?

I do not have exact weights as they both exceed my 50 gram limit scale but neither register on my bathroom scale (I clearly need a 50 - 2000 gram scale).  I estimate the smaller at not much over 50 grams and the bigger at over 200 grams.

The big piece is quite solid.  As you can see the smaller is porous with many air bubbles.

Four images of the large piece: "obverse", "reverse" and two views of the broken side.  The small piece is in the next post.

Shawn

[SC]

The smaller one: "obverse" with a bit of some raised design?, "reverse", side view showing air bubbles.

Shawn

[Andrew McCabe]

These look like fragments of a round pancake bar, formed due to the rounded base and rounded walls of a metal crucible in ancient Roman Italy. I see there is a protrusion on one but I'm not sure that it is anything other than a relic of some indentation in the crucible that formed it. I've one nice such fragment in my collection, can be found by clicking the "My Coins" link in my signature below, putting "pancake" in the search field and selecting "Search Ahala's photos". Full size round pancake bars are not so rare and typically weigh from 1kg to 5 kg. Your pieces at about 100 gram each are in the correct weight. You can usually estimate the original size of the bronze pancake from the edge curve of your specimens and from that you would be able to roughly estimate the weight of the original full pancake.

I would classify all such pieces, even an original full size pancake, as aes rude, and not as aes formatum. This is because no attempt was made to form or shape the original pancake, it just reflected the natural shape of a crucible, and even less attempts were made to shape the broken segments which inevitably have one curved edge but are otherwise pretty much random, and usually random in weight too. Still, like all aes rude, sometimes counter marks were applied at some point. Nevertheless that doesn't alter their rude weight and shapes.

[SC]

Thanks Andrew.  Interesting point about the shaped vs not.  I assumed that aes formatum meant it had signs of some definable form and not whether it was intentional or not.  But your clarification makes sense.

I will see if I can determine original diameters.

So the porosity of the smaller one is normal?

Finally what is your thinking regarding dating of such objects?

Shawn

[Carausius]

Vecchi, in his recent book "Italian Cast Coinage" broadly dates Central Italian aes rude from 8th-3rd century BC. Without provenance or hoard context information, I doubt you can pinpoint a more specific date for your pieces. I note that Vecchi's book includes a series of plates (pl. 85-88) of full-size pancake ingots with designs cast into them. I wonder if your second piece might be part of such a cake.

Edit: Thinking further, I doubt that hoard or context would add much to the dating. These are just pieces of metal that likely circulated for hundreds of years without design, style, dies etc. The usual numismatic methods of dating would not really apply, and I suspect archealogical methods of context would not be too precise given the likely extended period of circulation.

[Andrew McCabe]

Thanks Andrew.  Interesting point about the shaped vs not.  I assumed that aes formatum meant it had signs of some definable form and not whether it was intentional or not.  But your clarification makes sense.

I will see if I can determine original diameters.

So the porosity of the smaller one is normal?

Finally what is your thinking regarding dating of such objects?

Shawn

The porosity is typical of many such pancake slabs, and I presume stems from non metallic inclusions such as carbon which burnt out. Smoother slabs or fragments look more attractive but you could argue that, as a numismatic artifact, sponge like pancakes are especially typical of the crude smelting technology.

Dating: Formed pieces are generally dated 3rd century BC due to various type and shape analogies with early roman coinage. Unformed pieces such as these might date much earlier.

[Joe Sermarini]

...I would classify all such pieces, even an original full size pancake, as aes rude, and not as aes formatum...

I have been working on NumisWiki pages for Aes Rude and Aes Formatum.

I can understand why you would see round cakes as aes rude, round cakes and pieces of them do seem closer to aes rude than to cast shells, ax heads, etc., which are sometimes called aes formatum. I think, however, it was Haeberlin that came up with the term aes formatum. The objects on his plates 3 and 4, identified as showing aes formatum, are mostly round cakes and pieces of round cakes. I am not even sure he intended the term to apply to implements and tools made of bronze. He may have meant it only to apply to crudely shaped bronze pseudo money.

Haeberlin, E. Aes Grave. Das Schwergeld Roms und Mittelitaliens. (Frankfurt, 1910). http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k880368k/f1.image

[Joe Sermarini]

I have updated the aes rude NumisWiki page to address the issue in my last post.

[SC]

I still worry about aes rude and aes formatum.

I think many people (and dealers) have the impression that all of these items are early Roman proto-currency.

In reality they - both the small random shaped bits and the round cakes or parts thereof - are common to any bronze foundry operation from the bronze age to the medieval era.  The cakes are what is formed at the bottom of crucibles in bronze foundries.

Only those pieces found in parts of Italy or elsewhere where aes rude and aes formatum were used as proto-currency, and dated to the proper era might have been used as such.  The rest are the by-products of bronze foundry operations that were likely never used for currency.

While I have two pieces of aes formatum cakes that come from old collections and may have come from Italy and thus may have been true aes formatum, I have lots of pieces of aes rude that came from Roman Imperial era contexts in the Pannonian region.  As far as I know there is no indication of aes rude use in that area at that time so they must be foundry by-products.

I have yet to see a numismatic source that points this out.

SC

[Joe Sermarini]

Were all bronze foundries really so uniform? Even if something round cake like was formed in the bottom of every crucible, it was not permanently a round cake.  It could have just been melted and made into something or just gone into the next batch. They were not forced to accept that crucible remnant as a final product. If it was kept as round cake, and traded, hoarded, cut and broken, I think that means they were producing aes formatum. Or maybe they did just remelt those crucible remnants and those pieces round cake found in Pannonia are actually old chunks of aes rude and aes formatum that originated in Italy?  If I understood and remember the Bertol and Farac article, I believe they attribute it to Italy.

[Joe Sermarini]

I just scanned Bertol-Farac. They wrote that both aes formatum and aes rude were found in the Gračac, Mazin, Štikada and Vrankamen hoards. They also said, "They may be, but are not necessarily, of Italian origin." Aes Signatum was also found and that is, of course, Italian.  

[SC]

Those areas are all part of coastal Croatia which had close commercial links with Italy as early as when aes rude was in use.

The situation might be different from what was later Upper Pannonia.

SC