Ancient British Coins (ABC) is the premier reference book for the typology of Iron Age coins of Britain. It catalogues 999 types of coins found in Britain from around the early to mid-2nd century BC through the 1st century AD. More information about the data can be found on the Info page.
ABC was published in 2010, but has been edited for this site and is not the responsibility of the ABC authors (the original publication is available to purchase here).
The project to digitise the typology using the Numishare platform and Nomisma.org ontology was undertaken by a team at the University of Oxford, supported financially by the Royal Numismatic Society, the British Numismatic Society, the University of Oxford Barclay Head Fund, and private donors. The team includes: Dr Courtney Nimura (Institute of Archaeology), Professor Chris Howgego (Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology), Professor Chris Gosden (Institute of Archaeology), and Dr John Talbot (Celtic Coin Index), with contributions by Dr Chris Green (Institute of Archaeology). The project has worked in partnership with a number of specialists, who generously donated their time and expertise: Dr Philip de Jersey (Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery), Dr Eleanor Ghey (British Museum), Dr Ian Leins (English Heritage), and Dr David Wigg-Wolf ( Römisch-Germanische Kommission des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts), with contributions by Molly Masterson (DPhil student) and Dr Chris Green (Institute of Archaeology). Ethan Gruber (American Numismatic Society) created the website and the necessary Nomisma concepts for the project.
We are also involved with an international cooperation, Online Celtic Coinage, to develop an online union catalogue of typologies of pre-Roman Iron Age coinages run out of the German Archaeological Institute, Romano-Germanic Commission by David Wigg-Wolf.
The ABC typology was created largely based on data provided by the Celtic Coin Index, which is housed in the Institute of Archaeology. This specimen card catalogue is currently being digitised, and more information on this related project can be found here.
We welcome further offers of online data to which we can link. If you have queries about this, please use the Feedback page. Unfortunately, there is no permanent member of staff in charge of this email account, so please be patient if it takes us time to respond to your message.
This website is hosted by the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford and is managed by Dr Courtney Nimura and Ethan Gruber.
