The Roman Tokens in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

This article presents the previously unpublished collection of ancient bronze and lead tokens from the Heberden coin room of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The collection is largely comprised of Roman tokens; a handful of Athenian and unprovenanced issues are also presented here for completeness. The collection has several previously unknown types and variations that enhance our understanding of these enigmatic objects. The discussion addresses the connections between bronze and lead tokens, the use of tokens by Roman youth groups (iuvenes), and uses new die connections to demonstrate that the so-called 'spintriae' were probably the product of a workshop that produced tokens for several groups over several years. The paper is an outcome of the Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean project, which has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 678042. Thanks are due to the curators at the Ashmolean Museum (Volker Heuchelt, Jerome Mairat and Chris Howgego) for their time, Mairi Gkikaki for identifying the Greek specimens, Katherine Iselin and Klaus Vondrovec (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for providing data, as well as the twitter community for feedback on various die links. A database of tokens and specimens is being prepared online and is available at https://coins.warwick.ac.uk/token-types/.