Hello, For a serious project with my grandson I am looking for data of geographical distribution of coins findings that I think can be considered as a characteristic of trade connections. What we want to do is to create a map of finding of certain coin(s) of certain country in other countries. Coin type, country of origin and even time of mint not matter much for a moment (or at least it seems so). We would greatly appreciate any advise about how we can collect this type of data. Preferably it should be a database (databases) of coins with geographical data (preferably in a form of longitude-latitude) of their findings. Many thanks in advance.
If you want to do a good job of this, it will be an incredibly difficult task. What regions and time periods will you be looking at? Here is an example of a project you should emulate: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/emc/
For such database to exist, someone should have crated it. It could have been created only if the findings were reported to some central resource which maintains and presents this data. I don't think something like this exists, nobody reports their findings, except maybe on coin forums, and that would be very incomplete information.
Difficulties depend on quality of data. Yes, task of Fitz museum is similar but just opposite. Instead of "A project to gather together into a single database all of the single finds of coins minted 410-1180 found in the British Isles.", we would like to do a research on geographical distribution of "British Isles coins minted in 410-1180"
I believe that EVERY archeologist label each coin he/she found. Such labels are kept in museums. I know that some museums digitize their labels from their collections and make their databases public. However I am asking if any of YOU know about such database(s).
There is none. Even if there were, it would not include those coins found outside of excavations. The current legal system makes it unlikely that this will change any time soon.
This may be of interest to you alexdru: http://finds.org.uk/ The UKs Portable Antiquities Scheme, lists many coin finds within the UK and has a detailed, if perhaps not very user friendly search function, direct link to that here: http://finds.org.uk/database/search Sample database record here: http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/515640 Sounds like an interesting project for you and your grandson, good luck and don't forget to share the results.