Realising the potential of the Roman coin data collected by the Portable Antiquities Scheme

Philippa Walton

Institute of Archaeology, UCL & the British Museum

The PAS dataset

58284 Roman coins on database (March 2008)

Research background

Richard Reece’s ‘140 sites in Britain’ (1991)

Excavated urban, military, temple and villa sites with southern bias

The national picture using the PAS

2850 parishes with Roman coins

Parish with fewer than 20 Reeced coins

Parish with more than 20 Reeced coins

PAS and comparative sites with more than 20 coins

Comparative sites PAS sites

469 essentially rural ‘sites’ discovered through metal detecting

360 comparative sites

Regional analysis - Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire data

Lincolnshire

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PAS Lincolnshire Per mill

Britain Per Mill

Comparative LincolnshirePer mill

• 11 comparative sites (Total: 2882 coins)

• 26 PAS parishes with more than 20 coins, including sites like Osbournby (Total: 2537 coins)

Osbournby Per mill (1500 coins)

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Site analysis - Piercebridge

Piercebridge, Coventina's Well and Bath Cumulative Frequency against the British Mean

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Piercebridge

Cov. Well

Bath

One of 73 sites with more than 100 datable coins