DIEGEST PROJECT

The field of study

Die studies – the analysis of matrices used to strike coins – are fundamental to ancient monetary history and to broader questions about mint organisation, coinage circulation, political authority, and economic history at large. Traditionally, die studies have been conducted manually through visual comparison of coin images, a process too labour-intensive for extensive coinages produced by major Greek or Roman imperial mints.

Recent advances in computational analysis, image processing, and machine learning offer new opportunities to automate aspects of die identification and quantification. DIEGEST situates itself at the intersection of numismatics, digital humanities, computer vision, and computational analysis.

About the research project

DIEGEST is a collaborative research and technical development project that aims to transform the practice of die studies through computational methods. Building on earlier experimental work undertaken by researchers at the National University of Singapore, the project seeks to create a robust and accessible digital environment capable of automatically identifying coins struck from the same dies.

Initial investigations have demonstrated a highly effective working model that produces clustering results accurate enough to support large-scale die studies of several thousand coins within days or weeks — work that would previously have been unfeasible. However, the current system depends upon computationally intensive workflows and proprietary software environments, limiting accessibility and scalability.

DIEGEST aims to refine and simplify these processes by developing a user-friendly online platform based on non-proprietary software solutions.

By enabling large-scale and precise die analyses, DIEGEST has the potential to significantly advance our understanding of ancient monetary production and the quantitative scale of coin minting in the ancient world.

Project duration and structure: 2025–2026

DIEGEST is conceived as an 18-month interdisciplinary research and development project bringing together specialists in numismatics, computational analysis, digital scholarship, and copyright law.

The project is led by the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum in collaboration with researchers and technical specialists from the National University of Singapore, the University of Oxford, the Bodleian Libraries, and the Universities of Venice, Tübingen and Newcastle (Australia). The project combines technical development, computational refinement, legal analysis, and experimental large-scale testing.

Periods covered

The project addresses all hand struck coinages. Its methodologies are intended to support large-scale die studies across extensive historical coin series and mint outputs. The computational framework being developed is designed to be adaptable to a wide range of numismatic corpora and chronological contexts.

Research aims

The principal aim of DIEGEST is to make large-scale computational die studies practical, accessible, and reproducible for researchers.

Specific objectives include:

• automating the identification of die relationships between coin specimens;
• improving the efficiency and scalability of computational die analysis;
• creating accessible, non-proprietary workflows for numismatic research;
• enabling quantitative estimations of ancient coin production;
• developing analytical and visualisation tools for large datasets;
• addressing legal and copyright issues relating to digital coin imagery;
• establishing sustainable methodologies for future digital numismatic research.

Copyright research within the project:

A central component of DIEGEST concerns the legal and ethical dimensions of using digital coin images in computational research. Although ancient coins themselves are not protected by copyright, the photographic reproductions used in die studies often are.Researchers commonly rely upon images drawn from digital auction catalogues, museum databases, dealer websites, and online collections, many of which do not clearly specify conditions of reuse. The project therefore incorporates a dedicated program of copyright research examining how image use in computational die analysis intersects with copyright law across different jurisdictions.

Header images courtesy of the American Numismatic Society