Postcards from the Past? Roman Buildings on Coins
Many famous buildings are depicted on Roman coins. These coins are naturally very exciting for the archaeologist, since they tantalizingly offer an contemporary view of many ancient structures now incompletely preserved – or even of entirely vanished ones. But can we trust such coin depictions? How accurate are they? What can they tell us, and what can’t they? In this talk I investigate this problem, focusing on depictions of the Column of Trajan and the Arch of Septimius Severus, pointing out both the great opportunities they present and also the dangerous pitfalls that can bedevil an archaeologist trying to use them to reconstruct the ancient appearance and function of the monuments.What did the Images on Roman Coins Mean? New Approaches to an Old Problem
Some scholars see Roman coinage as “the newspapers of the day,” propagating important messages to a wide audience. Others believe that the varied and complex images shown on them were rarely noticed by the common public, much less understood. The optimists can muster a handful of ancient sources to support their case, while the pessimists argue that since the sources are so few, they must be exceptions. I take another approach, returning to the primary evidence, the coins themselves, and applying a technique seldom used in Roman numismatics: die study. Through this it is possible to reconstruct in great detail the actual sequence of coin production in the Roman mint, to determine when and in what quantities coins with each different design were produced, how long production lasted, and which images were grouped with which others. In this talk, I use as an example the gold coinage of the last six years of the reign of Trajan, AD 112-117, an exciting period which included the completion of Trajan’s greatest public works – his Forum and Column – and a war against Parthia. 
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