Not sure if anyone has seen this or if it was posted here...I couldn't find anything on it. Thought you all may like to read. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/18/c_137755039.htm
A question for cash students: Were the molds used for cash casting recycled in some way (pulverized into sand?) or was it necessary to dispose of all of that material as trash that could not be used a second time for coin manufacture? Years ago I did some sand casting (not coins) and we used the same sand over and over but we see molds for cash sold (usually broken pieces) which still bear designs. The article mentions animal bones making me wonder if these might have been crushed for lime to be mixed with sand for the molds. Has anyone studied how the ash were made?
This is the only one I can find that has any pictures. Unfortunately no coins... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc...00-year-old-coin-workshop-found-central-china
furryfrog02, Thanks, at least this photo gives an idea of the immense scope of this project. Looks like they'll be working on this a long time...
Some additional photos: (The tubular structure is a ventilation-shaft for one of the furnaces) While certainly a spectacular find, up until now nothing too shocking has come from the site. Some insanely high-quality moulds though, which were inscribed with their exact date, right up until the day of casting! Moulds from this period however are far from rare and modern archaeology has been able to very precisely reconstruct the different ways of casting and relating the archaeological record to these different production methods (stack-casting vs. upright moulds, etc.) One fascinating thing that did pop up is the mould below. While in itself not an incredibly special mould, it is the name in the signature (后钟官工褒造十一) that intrigues us. In it, the name 褒 Bao, the craftsman responsible for the production of the mould, is given, followed by the numeral for 11. In 1976, several 1000 kilometres from this mint, a similar mould was excavated, also carrying the signature of 褒 Bao! Preliminary speculations have interpreted this in different manners; either travelling craftsmen or a centralized production of mother-moulds, as opposed to locally as initially thought. While the latter would seem much more probable in my opinion, that would mean a far higher degree of mint centralization than originally attributed to this period. The western equivalent would be all dies for LRB’s being produced in Rome and subsequently distributed to the mints across the empire, thousands of kilometres apart! Personally, I am hoping this site might shed some light on the internal division in the mint, both spatial and administrative, but since only a fraction of the site has been excavated up until now, that might take a while. Awesome nonetheless!
Based on the consistency of the styles of the early Wang Mang coins, I’d say that the moulds were likely centrally made. That would be consistent with Wang Mang’s policies of tight central control of the monetary system and his attempts at anti-counterfeiting. It never ceases to amaze how you are able to find all of this archaeological information.
Older dynastic moulds were used and destroyed. That is because they can always create new ones using a metal mother mould to imprint on clay moulds for casting purposes. All clay moulds I saw were cracked open thus I am of the opinion it is done so to release the coins.