Coin Silver Source’s Evolution in Bosporos from the Fifth – Fourth Centuries BC to the Second – Third Centuries AD According to Pb-Isotopic Analysis

Abstract

This article generalizes the results of analytical studies of Bosporan coin silver made by Pb isotope analysis and the researches of the evolution of sources of silver supply to Bosporos the fifth – fourth centuries BC to the second – third centuries AD. Pb-isotope characteristics of coin silver originating from the territory of Bosporos (https://www.archaeolog.ru/ru/data/isoarchmet-iaras) have been compared with the latest data obtained for the coin silver of Magna Graecia, Carthage, and Rome, which made it possible to clarify the range of silver mining regions supplying the territory of Bosporos in different chronological periods. This way, at the early stage of the Bosporan coinage, silver was used from the mines of Lavrion, Chalkidiki Peninsula, and the Rhodope Mountains. Unlike Greek coin silver, the share of mines on the Chalkidiki Peninsula and the Rhodope Mountains in Bosporan coinage significantly exceeds the share of silver from the mines of Lavrion. Although from the third to first centuries BC, Bosporan coinage worked on the same “old” silver, the finds also contained raw materials from another source similar to the source for the coin silver of Carthage (Iberian Penionsula); no Roman coin silver have been documented in Bosporos in the period in question. In the second and third centuries AD, the main source of coin silver in Bosporos were the Roman mines located in Dacia (Roșia Montană region); there was also silver from the Roman mines of Iberia and the Massif Central in modern France.