object · aluminum coin · context · roman storage jar · impossibility · alloy not refined until 1886
the jar is from one of those agreeable centuries you cannot place narrowly — the second, the third — and full to the shoulder of seed and lentil-husk. near the bottom, where lentils settle, a coin lies flat against terracotta. it is pale. it is light. it is aluminum, which the world had not yet refined.
a roman coin would be bronze, silver, possibly copper-and-tin in the wrong proportion, and would have begun to oxidise a long while ago. this one will not. it is also too light: a denarius should sit. this coin floats halfway up the lentils whenever the jar is jostled, and settles to the bottom only by patience.
the supposition: a curator, last century, dropped it in to see if it would patinate. the supposition: it was always there. the supposition: a clever child, two thousand years ago, working metaphor backwards.
field-note · the inscription on the obverse is illegible — not from wear, but because the strike pattern has nothing to do with any mint we know.
coin · old coin · never · lacuna · battery · 1500