Cleaning, conservation and dating of a group of Ancient coins from the Mersin Archaeology Museum

ABSTRACT MSc THESIS CLEANING CONSERVATION AND DATING OF A GROUP OF ANCIENT COINS FROM THE MERSİN ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUM FATİH ERHAN DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOMETRY INSTITUTE OF NATURAL AND APPLIED SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF ÇUKUROVA Supervisor : Assist. Prof. Dr. K. Serdar GİRGÎNER Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Oğuz TEKİN Year : 2002, Pages: 95 Jury : Assist. Prof. Dr. K. Serdar GİRGÎNER : Prof. Dr. Oğuz TEKİN : Prof. Dr. Sait BAŞARAN : Assist. Prof. Dr. Necdet SAKARYA : Assist. Prof. Dr. Mehmet YILDIRIM Results of the research show that most of the coins found in Cilicia has been reserved for study purpose in museums. These coins were selected for study purposes in this work. The aim of this study is to analyse the techniques that are applicable to those selected coins from excavation process to exhibition and then practise these techniques thus to contribute to the evaluation of these coins. Former studies had concentrated on the analysis made for chemical structure and the spatial origins of the coins. Most of those studies composed of the analysis have been carried out by several microscopic techniques. Thus, "Chemical" and "Surface" analyses, using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Electron Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometer (EDX) techniques - former scientific researches proved that these techniques don't have any damage on the samples -, have been implemented on the study purpose coins that were obtained from the Southern Turkey. Finally using the results of these studies cleaning, conservation, dating and cataloging processes were conducted. Key Words : Cilicia, research coins, scanning electron microscope (SEM), electron dispersive x-ray spectrometer (EDX), conservation n