Free Republic

The Forum in Rome, dedicated to Julius Caesar, was completed in 46 B.C. as a site for conducting public business generally related to the Roman Senate. Much later, during the 16th century, the site was still usable—Renaissance-era people used it as a hospital. Doctors of the time knew that diseases could be infectious, so they set up protocols for dealing with them and the clothes and tools used to treat ill patients.Prior research has shown that doctors and medical researchers in Italy played a major role in establishing protocols, such disposal of instruments after a single use, and disposing of...

With new rules requiring IRS disclosure for all sales over $600, and in view of the fact that eBay dealers were specifically mentioned, does anyone have any idea of what buyers and sellers are doing for sales over $600 privately? How about a seller to a jewelry store or gold dealer?

Nearly 300 silver coins believed to be more than 1,000 years old have been discovered near a Viking fortress site in north-west Denmark, a museum has said.The trove – lying in two spots not far apart – was unearthed by a girl who was metal-detecting in a cornfield last autumn."A hoard like this is very rare," Lars Christian Norbach, the director of the North Jutland Museum, where the artefacts will go on display, told Agence France-Presse.The silver coins were found about 5 miles (8km) from the Fyrkat Viking ringfort, near the town of Hobro. From their inscriptions, they are believed...

A bipartisan bill to authorize the U.S. Mint to alter the metal content of coins in order to save taxpayers money will be reintroduced on Thursday, the two senators sponsoring the bill told CNBC exclusively. The bill’s reintroduction comes just days after a new report from the U.S. Mint revealed that in 2022, soaring costs for raw metals drove the price of minting a single nickel past 10 cents, or more than double the value of the coin itself. GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, of Iowa, and Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire, say their legislation is designed to cut...

A hoard of 175 silver coins unearthed in a forest in Italy may have been buried for safe keeping during a Roman civil war.The coins seem to date from 82 B.C., the year the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla fought a bloody war across Italy against his enemies among the leaders of the Roman Republic, which resulted in Sulla's victory and his ascension as dictator of the Roman state.But historian Federico Santangelo, a professor who heads Classics and Ancient History at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said it also could have been buried by a businessman who wanted to...

...in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the French capital's precursor Lutetia nearly 2,000 years ago.Somehow the buried necropolis was never stumbled upon during multiple road works over the years, as well as the construction of the Port-Royal station on the historic Left Bank in the 1970s.However, plans for a new exit for the train station prompted an archaeological excavation...The "Saint Jacques" necropolis, the largest burial site in the Gallo–Roman town of Lutetia, was previously partially excavated in the 1800s.However, only objects considered precious were...

Archaeologists From Södertörn University Have Discovered Two Roman Coins During a Research Project on Gotska Sandön, an Uninhabited Island in Gotland County, Sweden.During the Roman Period, Svealand ("land of the Swedes") in central Sweden, was inhabited by a North Germanic tribe. Contact with the Romans was limited, however, archaeological evidence does indicate an emerging trading network in Svealand for the latest Roman fashions.Archaeologists from the Södertörn University have been conducting excavations on Gotska Sandön as part of a joint project with Campus Gotland and the Gotland Museum.Excavations revealed silver denarii from the Roman period, including one that depicts the emperor...

The object found was a large lead ingot or 'pig' (about half a metre long, weighing 63 kilograms). The 'writing' reported by Mr Jones was a cast Latin inscription confirming that it was Roman and about 2,000 years old... The exploitation of Britain's natural resources was one of the reasons cited by Roman authors for the invasion of Britain by the Emperor Claudius in AD 43... Lead ore or galena contains silver as well as lead, and both were valuable commodities for the Romans. Less than a hundred lead ingots of this type are known from the mines of Roman...

The deepest layers of carbon-14 dated ice found in the Col du Dôme of the Mont Blanc glacier in the French Alps provide a record of atmospheric conditions in the ancient Roman era. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the study, led by an international team and coordinated by a CNRS scientist at the Institute for Geosciences and Environmental Research (IGE)(CNRS/IRD/UGA/Grenoble INP)*, reveals significant atmospheric pollution from heavy metals: the presence of lead and antimony (detected in ancient alpine ice for the first time here) is linked to mining activity and lead and silver production by the ancient Romans, well before...

Researchers led by Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen returned to a farmer’s field in northeastern Scotland where a hand pin, chain, and spiral bangle all made of silver in the fourth or fifth centuries A.D. had been found more than 170 years ago. According to a report in Live Science, on the second day of the investigation, the team, which had the assistance of metal detectorists, found three Roman silver coins, a silver strap end, a piece of a silver bracelet, and pieces of hack silver. Over a period of 18 months, they gathered a total of 100...

Canadian scientists probing the metal content of coins exchanged thousands of years ago in Mediterranean Europe have discovered a new way to map ancient trade patterns, to retrace economic ups and downs at the dawn of Western Civilization and even to shed new light on the collapse of the Roman Empire. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton have launched a research project in which nuclear radiation is used to identify changes in metal content among ancient Greek and Roman coins held in a world-class collection amassed at the university since the 1940s... A joint project between the university's classics department...

A team of archaeologists from the University of Exeter has found a Roman fort dating from the 1st Century AD in fields in Cornwall. Several items of pottery have been excavated and a furnace which may have been used to smelt minerals. Researchers said the find at Calstock, close to a silver mine, could show for the first time the Romans' interest in exploiting Cornish minerals. Very little is known so far about the Roman occupation in Cornwall... Archaeologists became interested in the site when they found references in medieval documents to the smelting of silver "at the old castle"...

In Hoogwoud, a city in the Netherlands, a 27-year-old historian named Lorenzo Ruijter struck medieval gold with his metal detector. More specifically, he found four crescent-moon-shaped gold pendant earrings, two gold leaf pieces that fit together, and thirty-nine small, precious silver coins, all from the Middle Ages, the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities announced. The museum dates the gold treasure back to roughly A.D. 1050. Ruijter has been metal detecting for most of his life and now it's paid off big time. "It was very special discovering something this valuable, I can't really describe it. I never expected to discover...

Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he is “gravely concerned” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said the Ukraine war is a “territorial dispute.” Guest host Mike Barnicle asked, “Senator, given the lit fuse that is Ukraine and Russia, and given what happened over the Black Sea, do you have any sense of the communication at the top of the house, each house, secretary of defense here, defense minister in Russia, Putin, the president of the United States, any sense at all of communication that might be going on between the two of them? Then as...

...not everyone agrees that this is a new finding, with some experts noting that other research has already found that silver currency was being used during the Middle Bronze Age in this region...Eshel and her colleagues also attempted to determine the origins of the silver in the hoards by studying their chemical impurities and isotopes — variations in the number of neutrons in the nuclei of particular elements, which change over time at known rates due to radiation.The analysis revealed signs of a widespread transition between sources in about 1200 B.C., possibly from silver mined in Anatolia — now Turkey...

"This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations," said the researchers.During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt. Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, "Israel Shekel," "Half-Shekel," or "Quarter-Shekel." The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in...

The coin, the first of its type discovered in Israel, was minted by the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, whose edicts led to the abolishment of the Sanhedrin Council and to the large-scale emigration of Jews to the Diaspora.1,600 years after the edict of the Emperor Theodosius II led to the abolishment of the post of the 'Nasi,' the Head of the Sanhedrin, school pupils found a rare piece of evidence reflecting this dramatic moment in Jewish history.In February 2019, four ninth grade students from the Haemeq Hamaaravi High School in Kibbutz Yifat in the Jezreel valley were orienteering in the...

Check your quarters, you could be holding on to a piece of silver worth $55. State coins that were minted from 1999 to 2008 are worth more than their face value as the demand for precious metals has been increasing. Some are 90% silver compared to a higher percentage of copper and nickel. The value changes depending on the current price of silver. The value varies by state, but the priciest version is Pennsylvania at $55, followed by Connecticut at $50. Georgia is worth $48. Silver proof coins are marked with an S, meaning San Francisco Mint, and have a...

The coin at the centre of the story was among a small hoard discovered in 1713. It was thought to have been a genuine Roman coin until the mid-19th century... The final blow came in 1863 when Henry Cohen, the leading coin expert of the time at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, considered the problem for his great catalogue of Roman coins. He said that they were not only 'modern' fakes, but poorly made and "ridiculously imagined". Other specialists agreed and to this day Sponsian has been dismissed in scholarly catalogues...A chemical analysis also showed that the coins had been...

Thieves have stolen a hoard of Celtic gold coins...from the museum in Manching, Bavaria... Just before the break-in, nearby internet cables were cut causing widespread outages. Employees discovered shattered glass on the museum floor and the coins missing from their display case the next morning. They were unearthed during a 1999 archaeological dig near Manching - considered to be the biggest discovery of Celtic gold in the 20th Century. According to Mr Blume, the find gave people a glimpse into the daily lives of people living in Bavaria over 2000 years ago.