Purity of ancient gold?

[traveler]

Hi all,

I don't know if this is the right section to post this question in, but is there any resource or paper discussing the purity of ancient gold? E.g. the greek staters or the gallic staters. I gather some refinement has been done since their staters are termed as gold instead of electrum.

[Sap]

As the Wikipedia article on gold parting states, the separation of gold and silver is a difficult process and nobody in the ancient world really bothered with trying, until they invented pure-metal coinage. But once a government had access to as-pure-as-technically-possible gold and silver, the two could be alloyed in whatever ratio the government wished. Even the "electrum" coinage shows evidence of artificial tampering with the gold:silver ratio; native Lydian electrum has an average composition of about 80% gold; the coins average around 60%.

There has been plenty of research into the chemical compositions of ancient gold coins. I own a book, "Metallurgy in Numismatics Vol. 1" (Royal Numismatic Society, 1980), which contains numerous research articles and papers on the composition of various ancient and mediaeval coinages, including gold.`The addition of "Vol 1" in the title presumes additional volumes were at least planned.

[SC]

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage is a good starting place.  It is fairly recent and has contributions by key experts in the field.

Shawn

[jmuona]

It is close to brand new, having come out 2012 and very useful it is!

Another excellent source is the brand new book by Butcher & Ponting (2015): The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage From the Reform of Nero to the Reform of Trajan isbn: 9781107027121.
Although mainly abbout Roman silver, there is plenty of information about ores, refining, bullion and trace metals. Highly recommended.

It is also an important book for a very different reason. The authors clearly and openly point out how important the contribution private collectors made was for the study. I am myself very happy to have been able to provide them with things that no museum had available and which I had obtained through the highly knowlegable dealers I had learnt to know since 1996.

Jyrki Muona

[Lucas H]

Another excellent source is the brand new book by Butcher & Ponting (2015): The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage From the Reform of Nero to the Reform of Trajan isbn: 9781107027121.

This does not go to the original question here, but that's an expensive book (around $170 U.S).  Jyrki, do you have it?  From the post, I'm guessing so, and it sounds like it's worth it?

[jmuona]

It is expensive, I agree, the cheapest I could find was the Swedish Bokus.se site, for around 135 €. That would work fine for EU people.
It is in ecxcess of 800 pages and full of useful information - both review of existing knowledge and new discoveries. Of course, having given them aroung 80 more or less rare coins to drill I can be viewed as biased, but as modern numismatics go, I cannot think of anything better to buy just now. Most Academic libraries will have it and one might wait a bit and try to get it that way. For people intersted in first century Roman silver and gold it is a must, I think. It contains new insight for the coins minted from  64 to 72, discusses the devaluations and revaluations of coins under Nero, Otho and Domitian and provides careful descriptions of different analytical methods and also much information on provincials of the time. The really new stuff includes the question of when the mint was moved from Lugdunum etc. If you have the money, buy it.
s.
Jyrki Muona

[traveler]

Hi all,

Thanks for your recommendations. Frustratingly none of these are readily available in my part of the world, but I've managed to read a little from google books. The Oxford handbook and the metallurgy of Roman silver coinage are both very interesting.