Realising the potential of the Roman coin data collected by the Portable Antiquities Scheme
Philippa Walton
Institute of Archaeology, UCL & the British Museum
The PAS dataset
58284 Roman coins on database (March 2008)
Research background
Richard Reece’s ‘140 sites in Britain’ (1991)
Excavated urban, military, temple and villa sites with southern bias
The national picture using the PAS
2850 parishes with Roman coins
Parish with fewer than 20 Reeced coins
Parish with more than 20 Reeced coins
PAS and comparative sites with more than 20 coins
Comparative sites PAS sites
469 essentially rural ‘sites’ discovered through metal detecting
360 comparative sites
Regional analysis - Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire data
Lincolnshire
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21
Reece periods
Coi
ns p
er m
ill
PAS Lincolnshire Per mill
Britain Per Mill
Comparative LincolnshirePer mill
• 11 comparative sites (Total: 2882 coins)
• 26 PAS parishes with more than 20 coins, including sites like Osbournby (Total: 2537 coins)
Osbournby Per mill (1500 coins)
0
50
100
150
200
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21
Reece periods
Co
ins p
er
mil
l
Per mill
Site analysis - Piercebridge
Piercebridge, Coventina's Well and Bath Cumulative Frequency against the British Mean
-100
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21
Reece Periods
Co
ins p
er
Mills
Piercebridge
Cov. Well
Bath
One of 73 sites with more than 100 datable coins