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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Curtis, post: 8228149, member: 26430&quot;]Speaking of destructive v. non-destructive:</p><p><br /></p><p>While there is a lot that can be done with non-destructive analysis, and more all the time, I&#039;ve been happy to pick up a few of the (wonderful) scraps from the destructive analysis. Both of the coins below are from Butcher and Ponting&#039;s (2014) book, <i>Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage, from the Reform of Nero to the Reforms of Trajan </i>-- as well as a number of associated articles. And previously Jyrki Muona&#039;s collection (and one also Orfew&#039;s).</p><p><br /></p><p>Mostly for the metallurgy they just needed to drill holes. But, at the expense of several dozen Roman denarii and other silver coins, they found that many of the long-held beliefs about the composition of Roman silver coins were grossly mistaken -- namely, the findings of Walker&#039;s studies, 1976-1978. After 40 years of being mistaken, they were able to provide a corrective. Importantly, the surface of the coins is often very different from the core (sometimes, I recall, because of what&#039;s happened to the coins from 1900 years in the soil, sometimes due to enrichment of the surfaces at the time of striking).</p><p><br /></p><p>The two coins below were important because the cross-sections allowed one to see exactly how the alloys varied between core and surface, and how they may have changed over time. Both of these coins were ex-Jyrki Muona Collection, later among 65 similar denarii sold by Berk, some of which were dispersed to other dealers.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Titus (M40) was previously [USER=74968]@Orfew[/USER] &#039;s (I was delighted to get it in the group lot, and if you&#039;re seeing this, yes I did track down all the provenance info from your posts that CNG left out, so it&#039;s not lost!). The Otho (M16) I bought from HJB BBS 215.</p><p><br /></p><p>The second two photos are the &quot;Before&quot; photos from the Archaeology Data Service (UK) website, where Butcher &amp; Ponting&#039;s dataset is housed: <a href="https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/coins_lt_2005/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/coins_lt_2005/" rel="nofollow">https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/coins_lt_2005/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>(Credit: I believe the cut Titus photo is the one [USER=74968]@Orfew[/USER] used here on CT when he shared the coin -- I hope that&#039;s okay! Or perhaps Marc Breitsprecher&#039;s in between HJB and Orfew.)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1446227[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1446228[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1446230[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1446231[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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