Francis Albarède
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 627191 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Francis Albarède |
| PRENOMES | Francis |
| SOBRENOME | Albarède |
| ASSINATURA | ALBARÈDE F |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Lyon 1 Université |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1994-1428 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 138 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2011 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
When is an owl not an owl? An analysis of Attic tetradrachms circulating in the southern Levant in the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE
International audience
Levantine Hacksilber and the flow of silver in early Mediterranean commerce
This study presents a comprehensive approach to provenancing ancient silver artefacts, introducing a novel algorithm to correct for mass‐dependent isotope fractionation. Applied to a Pb isotope database of 281 Hacksilber samples from southern Levantine hoards (1700–600 BCE) and compared with approximately 7000 galena ores from Spain to Iran, the analysis reveals shifting silver sources over time. Trade of the Levantine merchants with the pre‐ and…
Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens
Late in the sixth century BCE, the ancient Athenians overthrew the previous tyrant rulers and adopted a new democratic form of government militarily establishing themselves as a regional power. They constructed a fleet which played a crucial role in defeating the Persian invasion of 480/79 BCE and led to their creation of a naval-based empire. A key funding source for the ships was silver from the domestic mines at Lavrion situated in the south-e…
Identifying silver ore sources for the earliest coins of Athens
This study addresses longstanding questions concerning the ore sources used in the first series of coins of ancient Athens known as the Wappenmϋnzen (c.540-c.500 BCE) by combining comprehensive numismatic data on 22 coins (16 new and 6 legacy analyses) with lead isotope and surface elemental measurements (MC-ICP-MS and XRF). It finds usage of ores from Spain to Romania and Türkiye and frequent mixing. This upends current thinking based on a (mis)…
A new algorithm for using Pb isotopes to determine the provenance of bullion in ancient Greek coinage
A new algorithm is proposed that uses Pb isotopes to help identify the ore deposits utilized as sources of silver in Antiquity. The algorithm takes natural and analytical isotope fractionation into account. It proposes a statistical measure of the distances between the Pb isotope compositions of ores and artifacts. This measure is amenable to statistical tests at any confidence level. The new algorithm is applied to the Pb isotope compositions of…
Making money out of making money in ancient Athens
The observed weights of ancient coins are usually less than the nominal “ideal” weights of the coin standards to which they belong because state authorities took a fee—“seigniorage”—for minting coins to cover costs and to make a profit. The basis for calculating the amount taken by the state and the way it administered manufacture are not well understood. Here we analyze the weights of 1344 of the earliest coins of Athens (c. 550–479 bce ). We re…
Tracing metallurgical links and silver provenance in Balkan coinage (5th -1st centuries BCE)
Local types of coinage testify to the emerging use of silver in the Balkan interior, possibly related to abundant ore deposits in the region. Here, we present Pb isotope data for silver coins minted by local tribes and settlements (anepigraphic coins attributed to the Derrones/Laeaei, Damastion, Pelagia, Kings of Paeonia) between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. For comparison, we analysed coinage of the potential Greek emporia Dyrrhachium and Apol…
Ag and Pb isotope systematics in galena ores from southern Sardinia and southern France flag potential silver sources in antiquity
While lead isotopes serve to determine potential ore provenance, silver isotopes help evaluate if a specific ore flagged by Pb isotopes has actually been exploited as a silver source of bullion in antiquity. The combination of Ag and Pb isotopes thus constitutes a powerful tool to address provenance and identify potential ore sources. It has recently been observed that the vast majority of silver isotopic abundances in hundreds of silver coins fr…
Comment on Mints not Mines
Wood et al. (2023), hereinafter WPB, unveils a number of historical issues relevant to Roman economy and metallurgy based on trace element and Pb isotope abundance data on a large set of important coins minted during the Roman Empire (Ponting and Butcher 2015). Here, we discuss several points which, in our view, misrepresent the work of other groups, ours included, and bias the overall interpretation of the WPB data set.
Analyses of queen Hetepheres’ bracelets from her celebrated tomb in Giza reveals new information on silver, metallurgy and trade in Old Kingdom Egypt, c. 2600 BC
Egypt has no domestic silver ore sources and silver is rarely found in the Egyptian archaeological record until the Middle Bronze Age. Bracelets found in the tomb of queen Hetepheres I, mother of pyramid builder king Khufu (date of reign c. 2589–2566 BC), form the largest and most famous collection of silver artefacts from early Egypt, but they have not been analysed for decades. We analysed samples from the collection in the Museum of Fine Arts,…
Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt
Was silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model …
Isotope and trace element compositions of silver-bearing ores in the Balkans as possible metal sources in antiquity
Ore deposits in the Balkan Peninsula were intensively mined for silver and other metals in the Roman and medieval periods. Coinage mainly issued by tribal groups between the early 5th and the end of the 3rd century BCE provides indirect evidence that silver extraction predates the Roman conquest of the region. However, identification of centers of past metal production and reconstruction of large-scale silver fluxes can only be achieved using a c…
Narrowing provenance for ancient Greek silver coins using Ag isotopes and Sb contents of potential ores
International audience
Origin and fate of the greatest accumulation of silver in ancient history
The capture of the Achaemenid treasuries in 331-330 BCE by Alexander the Great in Persepolis and Susa marked the demise of the 300-year-old Persian Empire and the advent of Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander seized the equivalent of about 5000 tons of silver, which represented the accumulated tributes paid by subjugated people from the Aegean Sea to the Indus to their Achaemenid rulers. Die studies show that this gigantic amount of silver, the so-ca…
Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant
Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel …
Model for ancient Greek and Roman coinage production
Coinage production of ancient powers such as Athens and Rome is usually inferred from die statistics of monetary issues. The present work applies a Kaplan-Meier analysis of resistance to failure to 29 sets of well-documented monetary issues. The failure rate function assumes a U-shaped form known in reliability engineering literature as the ‘bathtub curve’. With the geometric distribution of die failure being demonstrably violated for a large fra…
New Findings of Ancient Greek Silver Sources
Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this endeavor. While most studies so far have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources, the present study takes a different approach by first identifying Ag-bearing ore sources in the Aegean world based on their geological characteristics and then using Pb…
From commodity to money
The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect the mixing of silver ores or silver objects with Pb m…
The marine record of the onset of farming around the Arabian Sea at the dawn of the Bronze Age
The rise and fall of human cultures are strongly modulated by the strong environmental changes taking place during the Holocene. Here, we use the sedimentological and geochemical records of a core taken in the Arabian Sea, west of Kerala, to identify potential factors that may reflect on-land history of local civilizations, in particular the Harappan culture which appeared and collapsed in the Indus Valley during the early and middle Bronze Age. …
A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean
The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations proper because of a variety of limitations of their time. Archeological evidence in the form of minin…
Separating silver sources of Archaic Athenian coinage by comprehensive compositional analyses
This article demonstrates that distinct and coherent silver sources can be discriminated from surface compositional analyses. In the first large-scale study of Archaic (pre-479 BC) Athenian silver coins in museum collections around the world, we analysed 788 coins by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry with a mathematical correction to provide a reliable composition for key diagnostic elements. Principal Component Analysis rev…
Geochemistry of Non-Traditional Stable Isotopes
Demise of a harbor
A Geological Perspective on the Use of Pb Isotopes in Archaeometry
Lead isotope ratios in ore bodies and magmatic rocks depend in a complex way on several a priori independent parameters, including the geological age of the tectonic province in which the ores and magmas formed and its U/Pb (μ) and Th/U (κ) ratios, two very sensitive parameters characteristic of metal sources. All these parameters are entangled in hard‐to‐read Pb isotopic ratios. With respect to the commonly used fingerprinting techniques, which …
Fe and Cu stable isotopes in archeological human bones and their relationship to sex
Accurate sex assignment of ancient human remains usually relies on the availability of coxal bones or well‐preserved DNA. Iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) stable isotope compositions ( 56 Fe/ 54 Fe and 65 Cu/ 63 Cu, respectively) were recently measured in modern human blood, and an unexpected result was the discovery of a 56 Fe‐depletion and a 65 Cu‐enrichment in men's blood compared to women's blood. Bones, being pervasively irrigated by blood, are exp…
A Geological Perspective on the Use of Pb Isotopes in Archaeometry
Lead isotope ratios in ore bodies and magmatic rocks depend in a complex way on several a priori independent parameters, including the geological age of the tectonic province in which the ores and magmas formed and its U/Pb (μ) and Th/U (κ) ratios, two very sensitive parameters characteristic of metal sources. All these parameters are entangled in hard‐to‐read Pb isotopic ratios. With respect to the commonly used fingerprinting techniques, which …
A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean
The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations proper because of a variety of limitations of their time. Archeological evidence in the form of minin…
Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant
Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel …
Origin and fate of the greatest accumulation of silver in ancient history
The capture of the Achaemenid treasuries in 331-330 BCE by Alexander the Great in Persepolis and Susa marked the demise of the 300-year-old Persian Empire and the advent of Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander seized the equivalent of about 5000 tons of silver, which represented the accumulated tributes paid by subjugated people from the Aegean Sea to the Indus to their Achaemenid rulers. Die studies show that this gigantic amount of silver, the so-ca…
Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt
Was silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model …
New Findings of Ancient Greek Silver Sources
Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this endeavor. While most studies so far have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources, the present study takes a different approach by first identifying Ag-bearing ore sources in the Aegean world based on their geological characteristics and then using Pb…
Separating silver sources of Archaic Athenian coinage by comprehensive compositional analyses
This article demonstrates that distinct and coherent silver sources can be discriminated from surface compositional analyses. In the first large-scale study of Archaic (pre-479 BC) Athenian silver coins in museum collections around the world, we analysed 788 coins by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry with a mathematical correction to provide a reliable composition for key diagnostic elements. Principal Component Analysis rev…
Demise of a harbor
Fe and Cu stable isotopes in archeological human bones and their relationship to sex
Accurate sex assignment of ancient human remains usually relies on the availability of coxal bones or well‐preserved DNA. Iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) stable isotope compositions ( 56 Fe/ 54 Fe and 65 Cu/ 63 Cu, respectively) were recently measured in modern human blood, and an unexpected result was the discovery of a 56 Fe‐depletion and a 65 Cu‐enrichment in men's blood compared to women's blood. Bones, being pervasively irrigated by blood, are exp…
A new algorithm for using Pb isotopes to determine the provenance of bullion in ancient Greek coinage
A new algorithm is proposed that uses Pb isotopes to help identify the ore deposits utilized as sources of silver in Antiquity. The algorithm takes natural and analytical isotope fractionation into account. It proposes a statistical measure of the distances between the Pb isotope compositions of ores and artifacts. This measure is amenable to statistical tests at any confidence level. The new algorithm is applied to the Pb isotope compositions of…
Isotope and trace element compositions of silver-bearing ores in the Balkans as possible metal sources in antiquity
Ore deposits in the Balkan Peninsula were intensively mined for silver and other metals in the Roman and medieval periods. Coinage mainly issued by tribal groups between the early 5th and the end of the 3rd century BCE provides indirect evidence that silver extraction predates the Roman conquest of the region. However, identification of centers of past metal production and reconstruction of large-scale silver fluxes can only be achieved using a c…
Narrowing provenance for ancient Greek silver coins using Ag isotopes and Sb contents of potential ores
International audience
From commodity to money
The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect the mixing of silver ores or silver objects with Pb m…
Identifying silver ore sources for the earliest coins of Athens
This study addresses longstanding questions concerning the ore sources used in the first series of coins of ancient Athens known as the Wappenmϋnzen (c.540-c.500 BCE) by combining comprehensive numismatic data on 22 coins (16 new and 6 legacy analyses) with lead isotope and surface elemental measurements (MC-ICP-MS and XRF). It finds usage of ores from Spain to Romania and Türkiye and frequent mixing. This upends current thinking based on a (mis)…
Levantine Hacksilber and the flow of silver in early Mediterranean commerce
This study presents a comprehensive approach to provenancing ancient silver artefacts, introducing a novel algorithm to correct for mass‐dependent isotope fractionation. Applied to a Pb isotope database of 281 Hacksilber samples from southern Levantine hoards (1700–600 BCE) and compared with approximately 7000 galena ores from Spain to Iran, the analysis reveals shifting silver sources over time. Trade of the Levantine merchants with the pre‐ and…
Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens
Late in the sixth century BCE, the ancient Athenians overthrew the previous tyrant rulers and adopted a new democratic form of government militarily establishing themselves as a regional power. They constructed a fleet which played a crucial role in defeating the Persian invasion of 480/79 BCE and led to their creation of a naval-based empire. A key funding source for the ships was silver from the domestic mines at Lavrion situated in the south-e…
Tracing metallurgical links and silver provenance in Balkan coinage (5th -1st centuries BCE)
Local types of coinage testify to the emerging use of silver in the Balkan interior, possibly related to abundant ore deposits in the region. Here, we present Pb isotope data for silver coins minted by local tribes and settlements (anepigraphic coins attributed to the Derrones/Laeaei, Damastion, Pelagia, Kings of Paeonia) between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. For comparison, we analysed coinage of the potential Greek emporia Dyrrhachium and Apol…
Geochemistry of Non-Traditional Stable Isotopes
Isotopic Ag–Cu–Pb record of silver circulation through 16th–18th century Spain
Estimating global fluxes of precious metals is key to understanding early monetary systems. This work adds silver (Ag) to the metals (Pb and Cu) used so far to trace the provenance of coinage through variations in isotopic abundances. Silver, copper, and lead isotopes were measured in 91 coins from the East Mediterranean Antiquity and Roman world, medieval western Europe, 16th–18th century Spain, Mexico, and the Andes and show a great potential f…
A Geological Perspective on the Use of Pb Isotopes in Archaeometry
Lead isotope ratios in ore bodies and magmatic rocks depend in a complex way on several a priori independent parameters, including the geological age of the tectonic province in which the ores and magmas formed and its U/Pb (μ) and Th/U (κ) ratios, two very sensitive parameters characteristic of metal sources. All these parameters are entangled in hard‐to‐read Pb isotopic ratios. With respect to the commonly used fingerprinting techniques, which …
Fe and Cu stable isotopes in archeological human bones and their relationship to sex
Accurate sex assignment of ancient human remains usually relies on the availability of coxal bones or well‐preserved DNA. Iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) stable isotope compositions ( 56 Fe/ 54 Fe and 65 Cu/ 63 Cu, respectively) were recently measured in modern human blood, and an unexpected result was the discovery of a 56 Fe‐depletion and a 65 Cu‐enrichment in men's blood compared to women's blood. Bones, being pervasively irrigated by blood, are exp…
Demise of a harbor
Geochemistry of Non-Traditional Stable Isotopes
The marine record of the onset of farming around the Arabian Sea at the dawn of the Bronze Age
The rise and fall of human cultures are strongly modulated by the strong environmental changes taking place during the Holocene. Here, we use the sedimentological and geochemical records of a core taken in the Arabian Sea, west of Kerala, to identify potential factors that may reflect on-land history of local civilizations, in particular the Harappan culture which appeared and collapsed in the Indus Valley during the early and middle Bronze Age. …
A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean
The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations proper because of a variety of limitations of their time. Archeological evidence in the form of minin…
Separating silver sources of Archaic Athenian coinage by comprehensive compositional analyses
This article demonstrates that distinct and coherent silver sources can be discriminated from surface compositional analyses. In the first large-scale study of Archaic (pre-479 BC) Athenian silver coins in museum collections around the world, we analysed 788 coins by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry with a mathematical correction to provide a reliable composition for key diagnostic elements. Principal Component Analysis rev…
Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant
Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel …
Model for ancient Greek and Roman coinage production
Coinage production of ancient powers such as Athens and Rome is usually inferred from die statistics of monetary issues. The present work applies a Kaplan-Meier analysis of resistance to failure to 29 sets of well-documented monetary issues. The failure rate function assumes a U-shaped form known in reliability engineering literature as the ‘bathtub curve’. With the geometric distribution of die failure being demonstrably violated for a large fra…
New Findings of Ancient Greek Silver Sources
Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this endeavor. While most studies so far have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources, the present study takes a different approach by first identifying Ag-bearing ore sources in the Aegean world based on their geological characteristics and then using Pb…
From commodity to money
The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect the mixing of silver ores or silver objects with Pb m…
Narrowing provenance for ancient Greek silver coins using Ag isotopes and Sb contents of potential ores
International audience
Origin and fate of the greatest accumulation of silver in ancient history
The capture of the Achaemenid treasuries in 331-330 BCE by Alexander the Great in Persepolis and Susa marked the demise of the 300-year-old Persian Empire and the advent of Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander seized the equivalent of about 5000 tons of silver, which represented the accumulated tributes paid by subjugated people from the Aegean Sea to the Indus to their Achaemenid rulers. Die studies show that this gigantic amount of silver, the so-ca…
Comment on Mints not Mines
Wood et al. (2023), hereinafter WPB, unveils a number of historical issues relevant to Roman economy and metallurgy based on trace element and Pb isotope abundance data on a large set of important coins minted during the Roman Empire (Ponting and Butcher 2015). Here, we discuss several points which, in our view, misrepresent the work of other groups, ours included, and bias the overall interpretation of the WPB data set.
Analyses of queen Hetepheres’ bracelets from her celebrated tomb in Giza reveals new information on silver, metallurgy and trade in Old Kingdom Egypt, c. 2600 BC
Egypt has no domestic silver ore sources and silver is rarely found in the Egyptian archaeological record until the Middle Bronze Age. Bracelets found in the tomb of queen Hetepheres I, mother of pyramid builder king Khufu (date of reign c. 2589–2566 BC), form the largest and most famous collection of silver artefacts from early Egypt, but they have not been analysed for decades. We analysed samples from the collection in the Museum of Fine Arts,…
Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt
Was silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model …
Isotope and trace element compositions of silver-bearing ores in the Balkans as possible metal sources in antiquity
Ore deposits in the Balkan Peninsula were intensively mined for silver and other metals in the Roman and medieval periods. Coinage mainly issued by tribal groups between the early 5th and the end of the 3rd century BCE provides indirect evidence that silver extraction predates the Roman conquest of the region. However, identification of centers of past metal production and reconstruction of large-scale silver fluxes can only be achieved using a c…
A new algorithm for using Pb isotopes to determine the provenance of bullion in ancient Greek coinage
A new algorithm is proposed that uses Pb isotopes to help identify the ore deposits utilized as sources of silver in Antiquity. The algorithm takes natural and analytical isotope fractionation into account. It proposes a statistical measure of the distances between the Pb isotope compositions of ores and artifacts. This measure is amenable to statistical tests at any confidence level. The new algorithm is applied to the Pb isotope compositions of…
Making money out of making money in ancient Athens
The observed weights of ancient coins are usually less than the nominal “ideal” weights of the coin standards to which they belong because state authorities took a fee—“seigniorage”—for minting coins to cover costs and to make a profit. The basis for calculating the amount taken by the state and the way it administered manufacture are not well understood. Here we analyze the weights of 1344 of the earliest coins of Athens (c. 550–479 bce ). We re…
Tracing metallurgical links and silver provenance in Balkan coinage (5th -1st centuries BCE)
Local types of coinage testify to the emerging use of silver in the Balkan interior, possibly related to abundant ore deposits in the region. Here, we present Pb isotope data for silver coins minted by local tribes and settlements (anepigraphic coins attributed to the Derrones/Laeaei, Damastion, Pelagia, Kings of Paeonia) between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. For comparison, we analysed coinage of the potential Greek emporia Dyrrhachium and Apol…
Ag and Pb isotope systematics in galena ores from southern Sardinia and southern France flag potential silver sources in antiquity
While lead isotopes serve to determine potential ore provenance, silver isotopes help evaluate if a specific ore flagged by Pb isotopes has actually been exploited as a silver source of bullion in antiquity. The combination of Ag and Pb isotopes thus constitutes a powerful tool to address provenance and identify potential ore sources. It has recently been observed that the vast majority of silver isotopic abundances in hundreds of silver coins fr…
Levantine Hacksilber and the flow of silver in early Mediterranean commerce
This study presents a comprehensive approach to provenancing ancient silver artefacts, introducing a novel algorithm to correct for mass‐dependent isotope fractionation. Applied to a Pb isotope database of 281 Hacksilber samples from southern Levantine hoards (1700–600 BCE) and compared with approximately 7000 galena ores from Spain to Iran, the analysis reveals shifting silver sources over time. Trade of the Levantine merchants with the pre‐ and…
Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens
Late in the sixth century BCE, the ancient Athenians overthrew the previous tyrant rulers and adopted a new democratic form of government militarily establishing themselves as a regional power. They constructed a fleet which played a crucial role in defeating the Persian invasion of 480/79 BCE and led to their creation of a naval-based empire. A key funding source for the ships was silver from the domestic mines at Lavrion situated in the south-e…
Archaeology (18 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (17 obras) · Geology (16 obras) · History (14 obras) · Geography (13 obras) · History (11 obras) · Ancient history (10 obras) · Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis (10 obras) · Geochemistry (9 obras) · Provenance (7 obras)