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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;rrdenarius, post: 3572929, member: 75525&quot;]Aes Rude and Formatum come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Your piece looks like a bronze cake that was cut / shaped into a bar of about 5 Roman pounds (Asses). Unless you have a find spot, or a dealer who feels good about where it was found, you can not positively confirm how or when it was used. Your piece looks like it was cleaned a bit more than mine, but that is ok. Sear shows a brite metal example in his book on RR money. Most of the big pieces I have came with a good coating of dirt.</p><p><br /></p><p>Cast bronze was used as money and to make tools and decorative items in Central Italy before Rome was founded (or started producing coins). Most of the items I have seen are dated 1000 to 300 BC. I have several pieces I call Aes something or other.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]952093[/ATTACH]</p><p>This one is a piece of a circular cake. It was broken into a more manageable size.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]952094[/ATTACH]</p><p>This is about 14 US pounds of cast bronze, or about a week&#039;s pay for a Roman soldier in 400 BC.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]952095[/ATTACH]</p><p>Bronze shells come in lots of sizes. Some think they could have been used as small change, scale weights or votive items.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]952096[/ATTACH]</p><p>This piece was sold as Aes Formatum. There are similar pieces in books on cast bronze.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]952097[/ATTACH]</p><p>Some early bars had fish bone or dry branch marks.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]952098[/ATTACH]</p><p>You can see a few tools in this box of cast bronze: plumb bob, knife piece, ax, scale weight. The two large shells could have been votive items.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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