'Making it’: Exploring Roman coins and mosaics through practical experiments

Friday lecture by Fran Lam-March, PhD student in classical archaeology, King’s College London, and Will Wootton, Professor in classical archaeology, King’s College London.

We are accustomed to seeing the many coins and mosaics from across the Roman empire but rarely do we spend much time thinking about how they were made. Copper-alloy coins are by nature incredibly difficult and complex to strike. The secretive nature of coin minting makes recreating the production process difficult. Similarly, mosaic is a multi-media craft with complex techniques applied in sequence and over time. Traditions of mosaic making, although less intentionally secretive, were rarely written down instead being passed between individual practitioners and groups. 

This talk combines two strands of experimental research based on extant tools and materials along with the archaeological evidence. It showcases attempts to recreate the emperor's portrait on bronze coinage and produce a domestic pavement for a replica Roman villa. Using experimental archaeology and a comparative approach, we hope to shed light on new aspects of the production processes involved while also understanding the critical limitations of this method.

No registration required, everyone is welcome. Questions? Contact Henriette Lyngstrøm at lyngst@hum.ku.dk.

About the series