Launching the Celtic Coin Index Digital specimen website

The School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, is pleased to announce the launch of the website: Celtic Coin Index Digital (CCID). The CCID is an online archive that provides access to the world’s largest dataset of Iron Age coins in Britain: the Celtic Coin Index (CCI). The CCI has been housed in the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford since 1964. The paper card index now holds nearly 85,000 records of c. 68,000 specimens of Iron Age coins – these cards and some of their related images and data are now available on the CCID website.

Iron Age coins were produced and used from around the early to mid-2nd century BC through the 1st century AD. They provide the first written evidence from Britain and mark the end of its ‘prehistory’. These coins are mainly found in southern and eastern England and are a major source of information on society, trade, religious beliefs, and continental contacts, forming a crucial part of the archaeological record for Iron Age Britain.

The CCID uses stable numismatic identifiers and linked open data methodologies established by the Nomisma.org project, which enables this digital collection to be linked to other coin databases across the globe through the related website Iron Age Coins in Britain (IACB). The digital version of the CCID will be useful for a range of interests, from finds identification to academic research.

The project to digitise CCI and create the CCID 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), Dr John Talbot (Celtic Coin Index), and Molly Masterson (School of Archaeology). Ethan Gruber (American Numismatic Society) created the website and the necessary Nomisma concepts for the project. Our advisory group includes: 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).

ccid

Websites
Celtic Coin Index Digital (CCID): https://cci.arch.ox.ac.uk/ 
CCID Public Engagement: https://ccid.web.ox.ac.uk/home
Iron Age Coins in Britain (IACB): https://iacb.arch.ox.ac.uk/
Contact
Dr Courtney Nimura: courtneynimura@arch.ox.ac.uk