Technological study of ancient Byzantine 12 Nummi coins – Part I

Byzantine bronze coins (6th cent. AD) minted in Alexandria, and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, are studied with focus on technological aspects. For the leaded bronze alloys, the formation of inhomogeneous phase distributions (Cu-Sn and Pb based phases) during the casting of the blanks is to be expected. Non-destructive investigations of the bulk compositions, the distribution of the Pb rich phase, and the textures of the coins are very important for numismatics to better understand the traditions of coin production in Byzantine antiquity up to the 6th century AD. The project requires joint-up neutron imaging and diffraction analyses, and as museum objects cannot be easily transported to large scale facilities for analyses it seems highly appropriate to combine tomography studies on the newly installed IMAT instrument with diffraction measurements on the same objects on GEM.