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STUDENTS PRACTICE COIN STRIKINGStudents at King's College London are learning how coins were made during the Roman period. -Editor 
PhD student Francesca Lam-March invited students to take part in the coin striking workshop as part of her project to emulate how coins were made during the Roman period. Francesca describes the project aims: "The project will use experimental archaeology to assess how the depth of engraving and metallurgy of bronze coin dies impacts coin portraits on bronze blanks. It will shed light on the processes and decisions made by those casting and engraving a die. It addresses the significant disparity in portrait styles in Roman provincial coinage for which there is no good explanation. By choosing to focus on the die rather than the often-studied coins, a deeper understanding of the struck image can be gained." 
After a lecture on ancient minting, the students used 2kg hammers to strike the dies using the ancient technique of inserting the dies into a tree stump. The experimental archaeology project yielded real results on how the depth of the die engravings impact the portraits of the emperor, showing that ancient bronze coin dies were likely struck hot rather than cold and that the deeper the die does not necessarily mean a better imprint of the portraits. King's Department of Engineering provided space in the Wheatstone Lab for the experiment and the project was funded by the King's College London Arts and Humanities Faculty Small Research Grant in conjunction with the ERC funded Roman Emperor as Seen From the Provinces Project. 
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Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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