Orio Malipiero's and Enrico Dandolo's denarii: surface and bulk characterization

Introduction From the ninth century to the second half of the twelfth century, the Venetian coinage had lost around the 90 % of its silver content. This severe debasement is a very fascinating feature for the history of numismatic and for microchemical investigations in the field of metallurgy. The significant increase of numismatic studies based on sophisticated analytical methods has further highlighted the potential of coins as a historical document [1-3]. In the present study, 50 Venetian coins, the so-called denarii, 30 issued by the Doge Orio Malipiero and 20 by the Doge Enrico Dandolo, have been examined. A multidisciplinary approach, focused on the characterization by metallographic techniques, Energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive microanalysis (EDS), and Time-of-Flight Neutron Diffraction (ToF-ND), is fundamental to characterize these metallic artefacts, in order to define the origin of the silver enrichment that ...