Three weeks; that is how long it took to turn a jumble of coins into an organized, identified, photographed, and catalogued 4th century Roman coin hoard. Specifically, the Haxby Hoard.

Object documentation is one of the most important behind-the-scenes jobs that the everyday museum visitor really never thinks, nor hears about.

Without the proper documentation however, there would be no way of knowing exactly what you had in your collections, what is on display or in storage, or what may be on loan to another museum, such as the Vale of York Hoard currently on display at the British Museum from the Yorkshire Museum.

There are many different parts that go into documenting an object, and we will walk through that process using the Haxby Hoard.

To begin with, the Haxby Hoard started as a large, indistinguishable blob of coins. This may seem a bit overwhelming to some, but as long as you have a plan in place on how to move forward, it is easy!

The first thing that needed to be done was to find a way to separate the coins so they could be identified. The best way to do that was by mint mark. Mint marks on Roman coins are on the back, or reverse of the coin, and tell us where the coin was made. On the example to the left, you can see it quite clearly under the soldiers feet; TRS followed by a pellet. There are over 60 different mint marks present in the Haxby Hoard which dates it from 330 AD-347 AD.

This whole process is surprisingly low tech, using a lamp, magnifying glass, reference books, and most important of all, your eyes. Once the coins had been separated into their respective mint marks, it was time to look at the obverse, or front of the coins.

In this hoard, there are three different emperors represented: Constantine I, Constantine II, and Constans, along with the personification of the cities Constantinopolis and Rome.

The ways that we are able to tell the difference between them and identify each individual emperor is by the legend that surrounds the bust figure.

This is handy because it tells us exactly who is depicted on the coin. The most common legend found in the Haxby Hoard for Constantine I is CONSTANTI NVSMAXAVG. The CONSTANTINVS is his name, Constantine, whilst the MAX AVG stands for Maximus Augustus, telling us that it is Constantine the Great.

This process is repeated with each of the mint marks until we have the groupings of each emperor or city coin.

Unfortunately, not every coin is easily identifiable. Whilst many coin hoards that are found have been purposefully buried inside a container, usually a ceramic pot, those don’t always offer much protection for the coins. Sometimes the pots have been broken and the hoard has been tilled into the soil by unknowing farmers. This can lead to heavy corrosion of the identifying marks on the coins.

When this is the case, it is still possible to at least partially identify a coin. In the example to the left, you can barely make out a face on the obverse, but no legend.

However on the reverse, to the right, you can see the outlines of two soldiers. This alone tells us that it is a Gloria Exercitus type, like the first example coin. Since we know that, we know that the bust on the front will be an emperor and we can work backwards from there.

From here the coins are put into trays in a storage cabinet, weighed, measured, photographed, and given its own unique number. It may seem tedious, but all this data is needed to be able to accurately identify the coins later during their new life as a museum object.

All of this information is then entered into the museum database to be easily accessible by the curators and other museum professionals when they are starting to develop their ideas for new displays for you, the visitor.

The last bit of documentation done is compiling a separate list that lives in the archive section that details how many coins are in the hoard, what types of coins they are, and how many of each type. This can be used by people doing research, or if the museum decides to publish articles about the hoard whether they are academic or advertising for a new exhibit.

Hopefully this has given you a better insight in what goes on behind the scenes, and how much work is involved before a hoard can be put on display for the general public’s enjoyment. Next time you are having a day out at the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens, do come have a look at the Haxby Hoard, and remember that you are not looking at one pile of coins, but hundreds of individual, interesting objects in their own right!