Walton abstract 2008
Realising the potential of the Roman coin data collected by the Portable Antiquities Scheme
Over the past ten years, more than 70 000 Roman coins have been recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme Database (PASD) as the result of metal detecting and other chance discoveries. Each record not only provides information on individual coins to uniform numismatic standards but also possesses locational information. As such the database represents an enormous digital resource with the potential to transform our knowledge of the province of Britannia and build upon existing applied numismatic research, particularly that of Richard Reece (Reece, 1991 and 1995). This paper will demonstrate the potential of this data - its use in both the investigation of regional patterns of coin use and loss and the function and fortunes of individual sites across four hundred years of Roman rule. More than anything it will show that Roman coins can be far more than a dating tool for key stratigraphic contexts.