Jane DeRose Evans, Coins from the Excavations at Sardis: Their Archaeological and Economic Contexts: Coins from the 1973 to 2013Excavations. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis monographs, no 13. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xxi, 305 p., 19p. of plates. ISBN 9780674987258. $90.00.

Reviewed by George Watson, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main (watson@em.uni-frankfurt.de)

As befits Sardis's status as the birthplace of western coinage, the publication of coin finds from the excavations there counts amongone of the best and most extensive of any site in the eastern Mediterranean. The volume under review here not only supplements three previouspublications with new material,1 but also corrects and newly analyses finds that had already been published. The aim of the book is clear both fromthe title and from the introductory chapters: not simply to analyse the coins, but also to set them in context. This book will thus be of interestnot only to numismatists but also to archaeologists and economic historians.

After editorial prefaces, summaries in English and Turkish, and a brief introduction, come two substantive chapters, followed by four appendicesconcerned with countermarks, monograms, reverse types of late Roman bronzes and statistical formulae, respectively. The lengthiest part of the bookis the catalogue, which lists over 8,000 coins found during excavations in Sardis between 1973 and 2013; this is supplemented with a concordancebetween the catalogue and field numbers from the excavations. The nineteen high-quality plates contain illustrations of 118 coins, 11 maps and 14graphs.

The catalogue is well laid out and easy to use. There are, however, some concerns regarding Evans' dating of the Roman provincial coins, whichis either too precise or not precise enough. For coins without an imperial portrait, she pays no attention to magistrates' names, which oftenallow a far more precise dating than that which she gives. For the coins of Sardis, she gives a false impression of precision. For example, cointypes 157-58 are dated in the text of RPC to "between 63 and 68", and in RPC's catalogue to "c. AD 65", which becomes forEvans simply "65 AD". This becomes particularly problematic when one of these coins is used to give a terminus post quem of a votivedeposit.

Mistakes such as these diminish confidence in the book, and its conclusions, as a whole. This is greatly to be regretted, particularly consideringthat analysis of coin finds from excavations in the eastern Mediterranean lags so far behind that done on sites in northern and western Europe. Thatbeing the case, if this book, despite its faults, can stimulate more attempts to do more with excavation coins than simply list the material, it isto be welcomed with open arms.

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2019.06.19 Jane DeRose Evans, Coins from the Excavations at Sardis: Their Archaeological andEconomic Contexts: Coins from the 1973 to 2013 Excavations. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis monographs, no 13.(http://www.bmcreview.org/2019/06/20190619.html)