Roman coins and rubbish bins…

What do roman coins and rubbish bins have to do with multi disciplinary research? Collaboration between scientists at the British Museum, the mu-Vis computed tomography centre and the Archaeological Computing Research Group at Southampton University has applied x-ray volume imaging techniques to produce 3D images of Roman coins BEFORE they are removed from the blocks of soil in which they were found.

The project is one of several collaborations between Southampton archaeologists and the mu-Vis computed tomography centre to investigate a number of Roman coin hoards. The process means coins can be identified much more quickly and without risking damage to them, before the slow process of cleaning them takes place – or potentially instead of cleaning.

This Guardian article published on Monday contains an interesting video and explains the link with rubbish bins 🙂

More information about the project can be found here