Dr George Green

george green profile picture
Senior Research Fellow in Classical and Scientific Archaeology
george.green@arch.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests

Roman archaeology; Roman economy; ancient numismatics; ancient gold; particle accelerator techniques for archaeology and heritage; chemical analysis of artefacts and heritage material

Geographic areas

Roman, Aksumite, Kushan, Gupta and Sassanian Empires

Research Profile

My research and teaching interests centre on Roman urbanism, ancient numismatics, and the economic networks that exist in the classical world. My current research use X-ray fluorescence, laser ablation mass spectrometry, and muonic X-ray emission spectroscopy to investigate the major and trace element composition of the gold coinages of Rome and its African and Asian neighbours. The broad aim is to build a better picture of the gold supply networks that existed in these various regions and how they interacted with each other.

I am the cultural heritage research fellow at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source. Here I help develop muon and neutron techniques to better meet the needs of the archaeological and heritage community, as well as helping this community access the scientific capability at the facility.

Projects

Principal Investigator - Making a PLASCH: Portable Laser Ablation Sampler for Cultural Heritage 

Co-Lead - The Golden Empire: Geological Expedition and Analysis Programme

Principal Investigator - Determining the flow of gold across ancient Asia, Africa and Europe https://www.ashmolean.org/determining-flow-of-gold

Publications
Teaching

UG

Roman Archaeology: Cities and Settlements
Republic to Empire: 50 BC to AD 50
Imperial Culture and Society
Science-based Methods in Archaeology
FHS 4: Urbanism
Greek and Roman Coins

PG

MSc Archaeological Science – Materials Analysis
Roman Numismatics

Doctoral Supervision

Students should look for advertisements for ISIS Facility Development Studentships within our group. There is an annual studentship creation exercise each summer to create studentships to begin the following academic year. I am happy to support potential doctoral projects that combine large facility techniques with archaeology and/or heritage at these creation exercises, although students should make themselves and their research proposal known well before the summer.

Otherwise, I welcome projects that combine classical archaeology, numismatics and materials analysis.