Audiobook

Aug 6, 2024 | arts and humanities

About this episode

Laura Perucchetti and colleagues at the British Museum have uncovered a group of skilfully crafted counterfeit ancient coins that may be one of the earliest examples of forgers using scientific analysis to dupe collectors. By examining the composition of the coins and comparing them with genuine artefacts, experts believe the forgers deliberately used ancient metal to avoid detection. The findings highlight the long history of a cat and mouse game between forgers and analysts, and the need for vigilance in verifying the authenticity of even the most convincing pieces. More

Original Article Reference

This SciPod is a summary of ‘The bad side of recycling: The use of ancient coins as a source of material for modern forgeries’ in Archaeometry, https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12738, with contributing material from ‘Forgeries of Hellenistic Bronze Coins of Ithaca’ in The Numismatic Chronicle.

Cover image: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-BC-SA 4.0) licence

Contact

For further information, you can connect with Dr Laura Perucchetti at lperucchetti@britishmuseum.org.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International LicenseCreative Commons License

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