Resources and the Roman Imperial economy: The metallurgy of the denarius as a source of information on the exploitation of natural resources and the political and economic context

奥古斯都货币改革300年后，早、中帝国的货币制度已经崩溃。铜币的生产实际上已经停止，银币的银含量下降到不到1%。造成这种灾难性发展的原因是什么？该申请旨在为一篇独立资助的博士论文的实验室工作提供必要的资金，该论文的主题是公元1世纪至3世纪中叶罗马银币所用金属的纯度和来源。继20世纪70年代L. Cope和D. Walker对罗马帝国银币的冶金学进行了开创性的研究之后，最近K. Butcher和M. Ponting进行了广泛的研究，证实了以前观察到的一般现象，但提供了更详细的，在某些情况下还进行了修订。然而，许多问题仍未得到解决和解答；布彻和庞廷对硬币的报道有很大的差距，特别是在尼禄改革之前的胡里奥-克劳狄时期；由于布彻和庞廷专注于对硬币进行化学指纹鉴定，因此只进行了有限数量的铅同位素分析，而这对确定所使用的金属来源很重要。这些要点将在博士论文中直接解决。分析所得的数据将提供新的资料，说明帝国行政当局对自然资源的开发，以及它所受到的地理、政治和技术限制。这些信息将放在更广泛的政治和经济背景下，以便我们进一步理解迪纳乌斯贬值背后的目的和原因，特别是短暂的多米提安改革或塞普提米乌斯·塞维鲁贬值等事件；旧币回收的程度；以及帝国的财政和经济政策，它的可能性和局限性。该项目还将调查现有的分析方法，如铅同位素，是否可以用于分析3世纪的银币，以便找到所用材料的来源，因为硬币中的银含量已经大幅下降。采用的主要方法是铅同位素分析，辅以化学指纹分析，但也有较少使用的同位素分析，如铁和铜。用于分析的硬币将被精心挑选，以补充以前的研究，如K. Butcher和M. Ponting的研究，以验证他们的结果，最重要的是，填补他们的数据系列中的个别空白，并解决他们的工作提出的新问题。

300 years after the coin reform of Augustus, the coinage system of the Early and Middle Empire had collapsed. The production of bronze denominations had been virtually suspended, the silver content of the denarius sunk to less than 1%. What were the reasons for this catastrophic development?This application is intended to secure the necessary funding for the laboratory work for a separately financed doctoral dissertation on the fineness and origin of the metal employed for Roman denarii from the 1st to the mid-3rd century AD. Following ground-breaking work by L. Cope and D. Walker in the 1970s on the metallurgy of the Roman Imperial silver coinage, recent and extensive work by K. Butcher and M. Ponting has confirmed the general phenomena previously observed, but provided a more detailed, and in some cases revised picture. However, many questions remain unaddressed and unanswered; there are significant gaps in the coverage of the coinage by Butcher and Ponting, in particular for the Julio-Claudian period prior to the reform of Nero; and since Butcher and Ponting concentrated on chemical fingerprinting of the coins, only a limited number of lead isotope analyses were carried out, which are important for provenancing the metal sources employed.These points are to be directly addressed in the doctoral dissertation. The data from the analyses will provide new information on the exploitation of natural resources by the Imperial administration, and the geographical, political and technological constraints to which it was subject. This information will be placed in a broader political and economic context in order to further our understanding of the aims and reasons behind the debasement of the denarius, in particular of episodes such as the short-lived reform of Domitian or the debasement of Septimius Severus; of the extent to which old coinage was recycled; as well as of Imperial financial and economic policy, its possibilities and limits in general.The project will also investigate whether existing analytical methods such as lead isotopes can be employed in the analysis of the silver coinage of the 3rd century in order to source the material used, when the level of silver in the coinage had sunk so significantly.The main method to be employed is lead isotope analysis, supplemented by chemical fingerprinting, but also by less frequently used isotopic analyses such as iron and copper. The coins for analysis will be carefully chosen to complement previous studies such as those of K. Butcher and M. Ponting, to verify their results and, above all, to fill individual gaps in their data series, and to address new questions their work pose.