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■uthordirector intended; but che critical reader will also enjoy the seriality of ihc |&erie$, appreciating the various strategies employed to create variation within this frsmcwork of virtually identical story lines. With ‘Columbo’ the variation came from employing some of the best directors around to put their own gloss on individual episodes, induding Martin Scorccsec, Jonnathan Deme and Steven Spielberg.

A popular cultural example to illustrate the mechanics of seriality may be too much t<o bear for purist academic discourse, so perhaps a second example from a ‘High art’ form might be warranted. Eco mentions musical variations in his essay:

They, too, were ‘serial products' that aimed very little at the naive addressee and that bet evetything on an agreement with the critical one. The composer was fundamentaiły interested only in the applause of the critical listener, who was supposed to appreciate the fantasy displayed in his innovations on an old theme. In this sense seriality and repetition are not opposed to innovation.

(Eco 1990:92)

It is rime to return to coin. As has been suggested in the outline above, in the early devdopment of Iron Age coin there was a lot of copying. Change did take place by degree, but it coułd be veiy slow. With our eyes we can look at this infinitesimal change, see it as a faflure of innovation and apply judgements to the culture accord-ingły. Nonetheless, as Eco*s work has pointed out, this probably has morę to do with our own cultural espectations of art than the esperience of the native viewer: ‘We know veiy well that in certain esamples of non-westem art, where we always see the same thing, the narives recognise infinitesimal variations and they feel a shiver of innovation⁵ (Eco 1990:93). We must wonder therefore at how Iron Age coin was percewed. What we see as slavish copying, with the occasional mistake leading to variation, viewers of the time may have seen as wonderfully subde variations on a theme. In a world starved of the richness of constantly changing imagery that television has brought to us, such subde variations would have been far morę nodceabłe than we perhaps imagine.

Varianon also took another form. Many of the earlier Iron Age coins usually only portrayed pan of an image, rather than the whole. The coin dies used were signifi-candy larger than the flans the coins were struck from. This meant that each coin was only a smali partial window upon a larger image. In some cases the die could be twice the size of die finał coin, meaning that only a series of coins together could begin to relate the enńre image. As far as an individual coin was concemed, you would know that there were other elements to the image, but their precise form was unknown to you. They were ‘off camera’; they could only be imagined. This must have been deliberate. There is little doubt from eacamining the ąuality of Middle and Late Iron Age metalworking that had they wanted to use dies the same size as the coin-flans, they were perfectly capable of doing so. The decision to show only a partial image must have been a conscious act, and one which persisted throughout most of the early serial imagery in Britain.

The entire aestheńc appears to be based on subde nuances, drawing attention to minima! changes. Yanation could take place, but within strictly defined limits. In

some ways perhaps this is analogous to orał histories and myths. Herc, in order to assist memorisation, Stones are often framed in verse, with the meter efFecuvely policing the story, making alterations difhcult without making them immediately apparent. Yet within these parameters, intonation can alter and endre sianzas can be added or left out, and itis in this way that certain storytellers can gain a reputauon over others, despite the fact that they are often relating the same story. The image on a coin should not be seen as a slavish copy of a copy of a copy of a Macedonian origjnal; rather it should be seen as a visual image which engaged its audi en ce. It was an image its audience was totally familiar with, and any variance from it in even the smaliest way would be very nouceable and obvious. Change was not impossible; indeed subde changes may even have been desired, but any change was constrained within tight parameters.

The colour of money

The conservatism within the development of coinage did not just extend to the naturę of the image, it also extended to the colour of the coinage. Here again we ha to examine what the Iron Age perceptksn of colour was in contrast to our own.

Until recendy most Iron Age coins have been classrfied as either gold, sifrer or ‘copper’ (‘copper’ should hereafter be take to represent shorthand for a variety of copper alloys unless otherwise stated), despite metafluigical analyses which have demonstrated that a lot of ‘gold’ coins were in fact madę up of complex tematy alloys of all three metals. Nonetheless the ordering and dassificadon of coin has continued to be done using assumpnons which eąuate gold content and weight direcdy with value. Over the last decade a senes of programmes of metafluigical analysis have given us a far better oveiriew of the ćhanging metaflurgy of British and Gaflo-Belgic coin (Cowell 1992; Northover 1992). We can now see comples changes in these temary alloys which demand a change in our understanding oflron Age percepńons and value systems. Cowell and Northover’s srudies were so advanced by the mid-1980S that Van Arsdell was able to present in his catalogue a temary diagram displaying the gradual reducdon in gold emitent of Gaflo-Belgic and British staters over time (Fig- 2.5; Van Arsdell 19898:505-6). This iflustration was a formalisańon of the perception which had framed the reconstruction of Celtic coin chronologies for generations: the idea that the earlier coins would contain morę gold, and the later ones less gold. But the picture is not quite as ample as at tninalły appeared; further analyses have shown that far from Van Arsdefl’s first attempt at a nice gradual curving debasement, something rather different is happening.

The concept of a gradual debasement is dominated by our own coocepn ons of alloys and metals. We understand that alloys are madę up of various propomons of different ełements. We ascribe a high value to pure gold, and bebeve that if it is alloyed with sihrer and a little bit of copper, this must mean a reducńon in ‘vałue’. But this assumption is not good enough. There are plenty of ethnographic case sfdics which should make us wary of placing our own value systems on different cuknaes. In this case the clearest example cotnes from pre-colonial Aftica, where gold was mt from uncommon, but its pcrceived vahie was much less than that of copper. Copper,