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July 2003-July 2010InteractiveDig Sagalassos
[image]
Marc Waelkens identifying nearly 80 coins found last week, most of them from the gymnasium area

Photos courtesy Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project. Click on images to enlarge.
by Marc Waelkens

Numismatic Studies

During an excavation campaign at Sagalassos hundreds of coins are found, mostly made of bronze alloys, sometimes with a silver coating, and very exceptionally made of silver or gold. Some of them are completely worn down, weathered, or broken and can no longer be identified. Most of them however, after carefull manual cleaning in the conservation lab (see Restoration, August 1-5) can still be more or less accurately dated. The final dating is done in Belgium by our numismatist Simone Scheers, and henceforth by her successor Johan Van Heesch (both KULeuven) based on digital photographs and on plaster casts made of each coin toward the end of the season. However, it is necessary to determine a preliminary date in the field, a task which has been assumed by the excavation director himself since the beginning. Of course, some of his proposed dates need to be corrected or fine tuned after final inspection in Belgium.

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