I've been watching episodes of the BBC/Discovery Channel's "Time Team" series, which is quite interesting.
However, watching the latest episode where they are excavating in York they show two Roman coins dug up at the site and it appears to me that they got both their identifications wrong.
The first coin (the smaller one on the left of the screen) they call a Helena and the other one they attribute to Constantius II. Helena sure looks like a Constantius II bronze to me and their Constantius II (the bigger one with the left-facing bust) is a Constantius I as Augustus.
I took a screen shot. It could be that they simply put in different coins for the enhancements, but these certainly aren't what the experts say they are.
Here's the episode. They two coins are discussed starting at about 4:40.
Interesting. I think you're right that they perhaps simply replaced the pictures with 'prettier' pictures the average viewer can relate to. While I'm just starting with numismatics, I've been on many an excavation and these coins are not of the typical condition you'd find them in in a dig. I'm not familiar with British soil conditions, but coins found in the context of Dutch excavations would need a LOT of cleaning, patience and luck to come out as well as the examples above.
Edit two hours later: Now that I think about it, I have seen some near-pristine coins and base metal objects come out of excavations with soils that have low preservation qualities.
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Posted 08/26/2014 01:55 am
