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

在奥古斯都钱币改革300年后，帝国早期和中期的铸币制度崩溃了。铜币的生产实际上已经停止，银币的含银量下降到不到1%。这一灾难性发展的原因是什么？这项申请是为了获得实验室工作所需的资金，以便为一篇单独资助的博士论文提供资金，该博士论文的主题是从公元1世纪到3世纪中叶，罗马银币所用金属的纯度和来源。继L.Cope和D.Walker在20世纪70年代对罗马帝国银币的冶金进行开创性工作之后，K.Butcher和M.Ponting最近广泛的工作证实了以前观察到的一般现象，但提供了更详细的，在某些情况下进行了修正。然而，许多问题仍然没有得到解决和回答；在布彻和庞廷对硬币的报道中有很大的差距，特别是在尼禄改革之前的胡里奥-克劳迪安时期；由于布彻和庞廷专注于硬币的化学指纹识别，所以只进行了有限数量的铅同位素分析，这对金属来源雇员的来源很重要。这些观点将在博士论文中直接讨论。来自分析的数据将提供有关帝国政府开发自然资源的新信息，以及它所受的地理、政治和技术限制。这些信息将被放在更广泛的政治和经济背景下，以促进我们对货币贬值背后的目的和原因的理解，特别是对诸如多米蒂安短暂的改革或塞普蒂缪斯·塞维鲁的堕落等事件的理解；旧硬币被循环使用的程度；以及帝国财政和经济政策的可能性和一般限制。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，以便在银币中的银水平显著下降的情况下确定所用材料的来源。主要使用的方法是铅同位素分析，辅之以化学指纹分析，但也可以使用较少使用的同位素分析，如铁和铜。用于分析的硬币将被仔细挑选，以补充K.Butcher和M.Ponting等先前的研究，以验证他们的结果，最重要的是，填补他们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.