Impact case study database

Since its launch in 2015, the CHRE project has supported 48 institutions in 25 different countries to enable them to put this important aspect of their national heritage online [E1]. CHRE created a well-targeted network of institutional partners, which covers Europe and the US, 7 countries in the Balkans (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece) and 5 in the Levant and North Africa (Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia). 17 stakeholders are public bodies outside the HEI sector, including: 2 antiquities authorities (Israel, Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventitives, France); 10 public museums (Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Scotland, Slovenia, Tunisia); 2 libraries (Belgium, France), 1 national finds scheme (Switzerland) and a transnational finds scheme (The European Finds Network); 1 national bank (Netherlands); and 1 numismatic society (France). Google Analytics of the project website (1/9/2016- -23/07/2020) records 12,455 users, and 31,743 searches with an average duration of 17 minutes. The web app has been used extensively in 58 different countries including: US (3,266) and the UK (1,728) Turkey (338) Romania (261) Bulgaria (220) Russia (166) and Switzerland (160) [E1.1].

The scale and composition of the CHRE network of collaborators has been integral to its international impact. Specific local impacts have been diverse, and often unexpected. Between 2016 and 2020 CHRE has:

1. Helped heritage professionals to promote the recording and documentation of hoards

In Belgium, hoards were seen to be of limited, local historical value, and funding to put documentation online had proved elusive. CHRE offered a platform and technical support from 2016 onwards. As the Keeper of the Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique notes, ‘Recording these finds online for the general public [has] created a more general interest in history, as well as an awareness of the importance of declaring finds…to the authorities,’ and he adds, ‘It is very important for us to be involved in the CHRE initiative as it is a major argument for encouraging local museums to open their holdings to the general public’ [E2].

2. Influenced changes to coin curation

The contents of most recorded imperial hoards have been scattered in collections across the world, dispersed in trade, or even melted down. CHRE allows some to be digitally reconstructed. As the curator from the Münzkabinett der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin notes: ‘CHRE entries…on particular hoards…provide us with a very useful and much appreciated tool enabling us to link coin hoard data to the individual coin entries in our database.’ The web app allows curators to recontextualize historical finds, such as those from Xanten (found in 1764), and Aboukir (Egypt), parts of which are now in Berlin. As the curator comments, ‘CHRE allow[s] us not only to profit from a highly sophisticated presentation of such finds (and research on those hoards by CHRE), but also builds unique identifiers (permalinks) of those hoards, which allow not only us, but any collection or museum with coins deriving from such hoards…to easily exchange our data internationally.’ This has changed the way coins are curated by staff at the museum: ‘The regulations regarding documentation standards in use here in the Münzkabinett [now] make the processing of CHRE-entries obligatory’ [E3].

3. Made national heritage available to national and international audiences

Prior to 2016, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) lacked the capacity to share their own holdings and detailed paper records of 350 Roman imperial coin hoards from Israel online – an estimated 75 of which were unpublished. The head of the coin department comments: ‘The CHRE team-member who came to train staff, brought Roman coin hoards to the foreground of the IAAs activity [by] publicizing the number of Roman…hoards in its holdings [and] expos[ing] the numerous unpublished Roman hoards to the public…[This was the IAA’s] first international collaboration . Since then the IAA has formalized two other international collaborations between its Coin Department and foreign institutions. This is due in no small part to the success of the CHRE Project’. In September 2019, the IAA installed a new display of the most important hoard finds from Israel at the Bank of Israel, revealing two hoards to the public for the first time. The oldest hoard contains coins minted in Jerusalem during the Great Revolt, or Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE), and the display features the largest hoard ever found in Israel, dating to c. 220 CE and containing over 10,000 silver coins found in the excavation of the Nabataean city of Mamshit/ Mampsis in the Negev [E4].

**4. Led to the recovery of looted national heritage and smuggled goods **

In Romania, the web app has been used to analyse coin circulation, leading to the recovery of looted coin. The police commissioner of the criminal investigation department of Cluj Napoca, who oversees the protection of cultural heritage from Romania and neighbouring countries notes: ‘The CHRE website [was] used to identify coin types that were characteristic of certain countries in specific chronological segments .’ Augustin Lazăr, who served as Romania’s Prosecutor General (2016-2019) says that CHRE, ‘was very useful for our team [for] checking various coin types distribution – especially those of silver and gold – whether certain coins could have come from Romania or they were common types without a certain model of provenance…in the last years we manage to recover more 1,027 gold coins Koson (circa 8.62 kilos, 37 gold coins Lysimachos type, 213 silver coin Koson)’ [E6.1].

In 2018, the project web app was used on the Security Studies training programme at University Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca. The course tutor notes: ‘Owing to the large number of filters offered by this application we track…the distribution of hoards (of certain metals at certain dates and on specific areas); the presence of counterfeited coins; the dates of publication and the richness of information; findspot of discovery versus findspot of keeping (owner)’ . The Institute of Archaeology of the Romanian Academy has created a hoard database of the pre-Roman and Roman imperial hoards from Romania on the basis of data from the CHRE project supported by the Romanian Academy and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The Romanian website describes what happens to hoards after discovery to promote understanding of the historical value of such finds [E6].

5. Led to the creation of a new Masters’ course in numismatics

Working in collaboration with CHRE, Leiden University launched a bespoke MA in 2018 to train the next generation of numismatists to research and upload hoard data, in keeping with CHRE standards of documentation. Each student is allocated a region in the Netherlands. Under supervision they make additions and corrections to the CHRE database so that their work becomes permanently useful. In addition, the CHRE project has hosted four summer internships in Oxford for students from the University of Tübingen in support of a numismatics course there. Recently Yale has provided USD20,000 to pay Yale students as interns to learn numismatic skills by entering data into the project’s web application there under the supervision of the Curator of Numismatics at the Yale Art Gallery [E7]. In all cases interns gained experience in working with an online database, an awareness of how a database can benefit from external online resources, and an understanding of Linked Open Data and the semantic web.

7. Linked amateurs and professional archaeologists, community history and transnational history

The Twitter feed, launched 12.8.2019 [E9.2], links museum professionals, archaeologists, local detectorists, students and other people interested in ancient coinage. It currently has 254 followers. It weaves together threads describing community projects (such as hoard conservation by volunteers at Worcester Museum) with an account of the discovery of the Charlbury Hoard from amateur detectorist with posts on a new archaeological hoard find in Bulgaria, and generates discussion, for example on gold hoards from Britain [E9.3]. A display of Roman hoards found by local detectorists in the Money Gallery for the c. 850,000 annual visitors to the Ashmolean, was supplemented in 2020 by a new display on ‘Lasers, Hoarding and Roman Gold Coinage’. It shows how high-tech ‘metal detection’ - laser ablation mass spectrometry - can be used to analyse trace elements, such as platinum, present in gold coin from the mid-4^th century CE, revealing how and where the empire obtained bullion for its coinage as the balance of power shifted east [E8].