A recent publication, and addition to the joint library of the Royal and British Numismatic Societies, is Roger Bland’s new book, Coin hoards and hoarding in Roman Britain AD 43–c.498. Roger worked at the British Museum for many years, in both the Department of Coins and Medals and as head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This volume is the 13th Special Publication of the British Numismatic Society. It is available from Spinks for £40.
The book is a handsomely produced hardback. The first two chapters introduce the study of Roman coinage in Britain, and provides an overview of hoarding in the province. The next five chapters provide a series of period-based studies from the Iron Age-Roman transition to late Roman gold. Two thirds of the volume is dedicated to a “checklist” of Iron Age and Roman coin hoards in Britain.
The book is full of maps and figures. These are generally quite good, with some excellent maps by Katherine Robbins. The graphs are largely based on the defaults provided by Excel. The unnecessary extra lines on the y-axis are a particular bugbear of mine. In only a few examples has Roger committed the cardinal sin of utterly pointless 3D (e.g., Figs. 5.30 and 5.31). Statisticians have been fulminating against this practice for decades! The photos are variable in quality with some excellent (e.g., Fig. 6.4) and some fuzzy and out-of-focus (e.g., 6.2). The tables are excellent and have been laid out by someone with a good grasp of typography. These minor gripes of mine should not, however, detract much from the excellent quality of this volume. There is much of great use in this volume, and insights from a first-rate scholar who has worked on hoards for many years.
This volume is going to be one of at least three on hoards that are due out. A second volume from the IARCH Project, written by Roger Bland and Adrian Chadwick, is due later in the year and a volume from the Oxford Roman Economy Project (edited by Jerome Mairat) is also forthcoming.
In the latter volume I have argued that numismatists have grasped the benefits of databases, but have largely not benefited from developments in statistical and spatial analysis. For example, relative risk maps could help us move away from simple dot distributions, and Correspondence Analysis could help us see patterns in our data that are not otherwise visible. My hope is someone will take the data assembled by the IARCH Project and “run with it”.
Kris Lockyear, 26th January 2018.
The RNS / BNS Library Blog 