BOOK REVIEW: COINS FROM EXCAVATIONS AT SARDIS

Jane DeRose Evans, Coins from the Excavations at Sardis: Their Archaeological and Economic Contexts: Coins from the 1973 to 2013 Excavations. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis monographs, no 13. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xxi, 305 p., 19 p. of plates. ISBN 9780674987258. $90.00.

Reviewed by George Watson, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main (watson@em.uni-frankfurt.de)

As befits Sardis's status as the birthplace of western coinage, the publication of coin finds from the excavations there counts among one of the best and most extensive of any site in the eastern Mediterranean. The volume under review here not only supplements three previous publications with new material,1 but also corrects and newly analyses finds that had already been published. The aim of the book is clear both from the title and from the introductory chapters: not simply to analyse the coins, but also to set them in context. This book will thus be of interest not only to numismatists but also to archaeologists and economic historians.

After editorial prefaces, summaries in English and Turkish, and a brief introduction, come two substantive chapters, followed by four appendices concerned with countermarks, monograms, reverse types of late Roman bronzes and statistical formulae, respectively. The lengthiest part of the book is the catalogue, which lists over 8,000 coins found during excavations in Sardis between 1973 and 2013; this is supplemented with a concordance between the catalogue and field numbers from the excavations. The nineteen high-quality plates contain illustrations of 118 coins, 11 maps and 14 graphs.

The catalogue is well laid out and easy to use. There are, however, some concerns regarding Evans' dating of the Roman provincial coins, which is either too precise or not precise enough. For coins without an imperial portrait, she pays no attention to magistrates' names, which often allow a far more precise dating than that which she gives. For the coins of Sardis, she gives a false impression of precision. For example, coin types 157–58 are dated in the text of RPC to "between 63 and 68", and in RPC's catalogue to "c. AD 65", which becomes for Evans simply "65 AD". This becomes particularly problematic when one of these coins is used to give a terminus post quem of a votive deposit.

Mistakes such as these diminish confidence in the book, and its conclusions, as a whole. This is greatly to be regretted, particularly considering that analysis of coin finds from excavations in the eastern Mediterranean lags so far behind that done on sites in northern and western Europe. That being the case, if this book, despite its faults, can stimulate more attempts to do more with excavation coins than simply list the material, it is to be welcomed with open arms.

To read the complete article, see:
2019.06.19 Jane DeRose Evans, Coins from the Excavations at Sardis: Their Archaeological and Economic Contexts: Coins from the 1973 to 2013 Excavations. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis monographs, no 13. (http://www.bmcreview.org/2019/06/20190619.html)

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