About Us

The portal is affiliated to the subproject A11 of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 933 “Material Text Cultures. Materiality and Presence of Writing in Non-Typographic Societies” of the German Research Foundation. It focuses on the analysis of graffiti (engravings) on Roman gold coins. For the first time the CRC 933 focuses on numismatic evidence, and the practice of its reception, as written artefacts.  While graffiti on other materials have already been examined on many occasions, this has rarely been done in regard to coins.

The project focuses on – reconstructable – forms of the perception of writing on Roman coins and their secondary marking by graffiti, which are partly directed at private and partly at public audiences. This includes the analysis of the specific materiality of gold coins as moveable written artefacts independent of a topological context as well as the text-image interactions that can be recognized on them.

The portal serves the analysis of a significant stock of material for the project. Since the project focuses on graffiti on Roman gold coins, this cluster is initially the centre of attention. On the long run, however, all extant evidence with secondary markings by graffiti throughout epochs and across denominations shall be recorded in the portal. After the termination of the CRC, this database will continue to make numismatic artefacts with graffiti accessible to the public and scientific community.

 

For further information on the subproject A11 of the CRC 933 see the homepage of the subproject: https://www.materiale-textkulturen.de/teilprojekt.php?tp=A11&up=

 

If you come across a coin from any collection or research that you might work with that could be relevant for both our project and this database as well, we would be happy and thankful about a notification. You can find the relevant information under "contact". Thank you!

 

Photo, home page: Thomas Zühmer (RLM Trier)

 

Special thanks go to the Coin Cabinet of the State Museum of Berlin for the provision of existing templates to construct the portal.

We also thank Pere Pau Ripollés (dédalo, Valencia) for the opportunity to work with his drawings of letters, and Andrei Coca (Heidelberg) for the new drawings of the graffiti.