This electronic publication was assembled by J. H. Kroll of the University of Texas at Austin and Sebastian Heath of the American Numismatic Society. Andrew Meadows, Keeper of Greek Coins in the British Museum Department of Coins and Medals kindly arranged for the provision of photographs. The electronic scanning of the photographs was made possible through a grant from The University of Texas at Austin Office of the Vice President for Research.

Unearthed on June 22, 1911, the hoard consisted of 6 kilos of uncoined cut-silver bullion and c. 4.2 kilos of silver coins, c. 600 coins in all. Fully four-fifths of the latter are South Italian (Metapontum, Sybaris, Croton, Velia, and Posidonia,; the remaining 121 coins came from Corcyra and 23 cities in Sicily, Thrace, Central Greece, and some Aegean islands. E. Babelon (RN 1912, 1-40) promptly published a nearly complete record of the coins together with notes on some of the unminted silver, including the end of a flat rectangular slab ingot that had been stamped with a square incuse stamp identical to those on the reverses of coins of Selinus. Close to half of the uncoined silver, including the stamped slab ingot fragment, however, has not been seen since M.P. Vlasto initially recorded the hoard in Paris and Taranto in 1911; it is assumed that this silver was lost to the melting pot.

On October 14, 1921, The British Museum Department of Coins and Metals purchased from Spinks the other half of the bullion, some 60 pieces of ingots and of worked silver with a total weight of just over 3 kilograms, in a sizable hoard lot that also included 47 coins of Metapontum, Sybaris, and Croton, most of them in chipped, broken, or extremely fragmentary condition. Although the lot includes the largest preserved assemblage of silver bullion from the ancient Greek world, it has remained unstudied and unpublished.

The decision to make this material available on the Internet was initially motivated by the unlikelihood that any journal would be interested in publishing a fully-illustrated record of these less than aesthetically pleasing chunks of metal. Internet-based publication offers its own advantages, however, and a brief discussion of these may improve the readers ability to make use of the information presented here.

In the preparation of this publication an important distinction was made between the permanent archival version of the document and the presentation of that information in an easily readable form. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the formatting language of the World Wide-Web and has proven to be an immensely successful means of delivering digital content to wide audiences. Its main disadvantage, however, it is that it tends to strip documents of any information not related to their appearance on a computer screen. The formal specification of HTML is also rapidly changing and there is no guarantee that it will not be entirely superceded at some future point. This could result in HTML documents no longer being easily readable by standard applications.

In order to overcome these shortcomings of HTML, this publication uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the format for its long-term, archival version. XML is an internationally recognized standard for representing the structure of documents and is easily transformed into either HTML or plain text for internet-based reading. This flexibility allows multiple versions of this document to be made available. Accordingly, it is possible to view the list of ingots, rods, and coins either with or without images directly attached. Furthermore, the list of objects have also been sorted by type then weight, as well as by weight then type. These various versions are listed below with their Uniform Resource Locators (URLs):

1	Archival XML text file	http://www.numismatics.org/publications/taranto1911/taranto1911.xml
2	Text and tables with no images	http://www.numismatics.org/publications/taranto1911/index.html
3	Text and tables with images	http://www.numismatics.org/publications/taranto1911/indeximages.html
4	Sorted by weight and type	http://www.numismatics.org/publications/taranto1911/weighttype.txt - text file for import into database or spreadsheet.
5	Sorted by type and weight	http://www.numismatics.org/publications/taranto1911/typeweight.txt - text file for import into database or spreadsheet.

These brief comments are not intended as full introduction to the current state-of-the-art in digital publication of scholarly materials. Further information about XML is available at the web site of the World Wide Web Consortium. The specific tag set used by this document was developed by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).

As of the time of publication there is no formal standard for resolution-independent rendering of images within web-browsers. It is therefore not possible to ensure that images appear at 1:1 on reader's computer screens or on paper after printing. The resolution of the inline images that appear in the third version of this document is 60 dpi, and 150 dpi for those linked-to from the second version. The authors hope that the inclusion of scales under all images partially alleviates this problem.

Ingot types

F	= Flat ingot (thickness relatively even), either rectangular or circular (pancake-like) in shape.
FR	= Flat rectangular slab ingot (thickness relatively even).
Cake	= Cake ingot: disk-shaped, plano-convex in section.
Bar	= Rectangular bar ingot, plano-convex in section.

No.	B.M. Acc.	Weight	L./W./Th. (mm.)	Ingot Type	Description
1.	1921-10-14-185	559.9	110/ 66/ 8-12	FR	4 edges: the 2 long ones cut, the two short ones original as cast.
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2.	1921-10-14--186	429.3	96/ 74/ 7	FR	Slab end: 1 edge cut, 3 original edges as cast. Rough surface deeply punched with with a circular stamp(?), possibly bearing the letter Α or Δ (as recorded in the BM inventory), if in fact there is any letter in relief at all.
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3.	1921-10-14-187	181.4	54/ 53/ 10	FR	5 edges, of which 4 are cut.
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4.	1921-10-14-188	129.6	59/ 32/ 10	Cake	5 edges, of which 2 1/2 are cut. 2 incuse punches on smooth face.
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5.	1921-10-14-189	99.5	66/ 25/ 8	FR	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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6.	1921-10-14-190	114.7	58/ 42/ 8	Cake?	4 edges, of which 3 cut. Circular depression (from a stamp?) on the face cut across with a chisel.
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7.	1921-10-14-191	87.5	62/ 32/ 9	F	3 edges, of which 2 cut; one (curved) as cast.
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8.	1921-10-14-192	105.8	44/ 28/ 12	F	4 cut edges.
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9.	1921-10-14-193	80.8	51/ 30/ 7	F	4 cut edges.
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10.	1921-10-14-194	168.0	42/ 43/ 8	F	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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11.	1921-10-14-195	103.7	62/ 35/ 14	Bar	3 edges, of which 2 cut.
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12.	1921-10-14-196	136.7	45/ 26/ 18	FR	Corner of thick slab: 4 edges, of which 2 are cut. Deep squarish punch on the smooth surface.
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13.	1921-10-14-197	66.1	38/ 46/ 7	FR	Corner piece, of which 2 edges are cut.
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14.	1921-10-14-198	53.1	37/ 32/ 7	FR	5 edges, of which 4 cut.
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15.	1921-10-14-199	41.1	56/ 25/ 7	FR	Corner piece, of which 1 edge is cut.
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16.	1921-10-14-200	53.3	49/ 29/ 15	Bar	3 edges: one original as cast, two cut with a curved chisel blade.
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17.	1921-10-14-201	44.7	42/ 29/ 8	FR	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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18.	1921-10-14-202	38.8	32/ 24/ 10	F	4 cut edges.
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19.	1921-10-14-203	33.4	32/ 24/ 8	Cake	5 edges, of which 4 are cut.
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20.	1921-10-14-204	52.2	42/ 18/ 11	FS	Corner piece, of which 2 edges are cut.
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21.	1921-10-14-205	38.9	58/ 15/ 6	F	4 cut edges.
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22.	1921-10-14-206	36.6	42/ 14/ 8	Bar	Middle section, of which the 2 long edges are cut, the two short edges are original as cast.
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23.	1921-10-14-207	39.5	42/ 21/ 7	F	4 cut edges.
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24.	1921-10-14-208	37.3	25/ 26/ 10	Bar	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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25.	1921-10-14-209	23.1	20/ 15/ 19	?	4 edges of thick ingot cut into truncated pyramid shape .
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26.	1921-10-14-210	36.3	27/ 25/ 10	FS	5 cut edges.
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27.	1921-10-14-211	21.4	27/ 16/ 10	Bar?	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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28.	1921-10-14-212	18.1	26/ 24/ 8	F	3 cut edges.
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29.	1921-10-14-213	12.6	20/ 17/ 5	FS	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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30.	1921-10-14-214	18.5	27/ 13/ 14	?	4 cut edges.
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31.	1921-10-14-215	34.0	26/ 19/ 14	FS	4 edges, of which the longest (with a moulded, offset profile) is original as cast .
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32.	1921-10-14-216	29.9	37/ 26/ 7	F	5 edges, of which 2 are original, 3 are cut, and one is roughly torn off.
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33.	1921-10-14-217	15.4	21/ 18/ 7	FR	5 sides. of which 3 are cut.
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34.	1921-10-14-218	18.3	29/ 16/ 6	FR	Corner piece, of which 2 edges are cut.
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35.	1921-10-14-219	22.5	38/ 18/ 5	Bar Dump	Whole. Chisel cut across middle.
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36.	1921-10-14-220	14.3	32/ 20/ 5	F	Corner piece, of which 2 edges are original, 3 are cut.
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37.	1921-10-14-221	17.2	24/ 19/ 6-8	Cake or Bar	5 cut edges. Lines from possible grafitto on one face.
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38.	1921-10-14-222	14.3	22/ 14/ 8	F	4 cut edges.
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39.	1921-10-14-223	21.8	21/ 20/ 8-13	Cake or Bar	4 cut edges.
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40.	1921-10-14-224	18.5	23/ 16/ 8-10	Cake or Bar	4 cut edges.
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41.	1921-10-14-225	19.0	28/ 24/ 5	F	5 cut edges.
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42.	1921-10-14-226	11.0	21/ 16/ 7	F	5 edges, of which 4 are cut.
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43.	1921-10-14-227	10.0	21/ 16/ 10	Cake	3 edges, of which 2 are cut .
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44.	1921-10-14-228	11.8	21/ 31/ 10	?	4 edges, of which 3 are cut; original cast edge is slightly curve with a moulded, offset profile.
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45.	1921-10-14-229	3.9	15/ 16/ 7	?	4 cut facets.
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46.	1921-10-14-230	17.9	26/ 15/ 15	Cake	3 cut edges, from center of ingot.
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47.	1921-10-14-231	7.8	16/ 14/ 7	?	4 edges, of which 3 are cut .
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48.	1921-10-14-232	4.3	19/ 9/ 7	F	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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49.	1921-10-14-233	4.3	18/ 8/ 5	?	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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50.	1921-10-14-234	5.1	17/ 11/ 10	FR	4 edges, of which 3 are cut.
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51.	1921-10-14-235	4.4	14/ 9/ 7	?	4 cut edges in truncated pyramid shape.
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No.	B.M. Acc.	Weight	L./W./Th. (mm.)	Description
52.	1921-10-14-240	4.32	20/ 17/ 3	Flattened disk.
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53.	1921-10-14-241	1.04	17/ 18/ 2	Thin rod, scored and bent in middle; scored also 2mm from one end.
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54.	1921-10-14-242	40.10	63/ 31/ 4-7	Thick tapering rod, bent back twice on itself.
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55.	1921-10-14.243	32.0	55/ 21/ 2-11	Thick, uneven rod bent and twisted.
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56.	1921-10-14-244	10.2	46/ 20/ 2-5	Thick tapering rod bent in two.
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57.	1921-10-14-245	2.78	51/ 8/ 0.7	Thin flat strip, now broken in 4 pieces.
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No.	B.M. Acc.	Weight	L/W	Description
58.	1921-10-14-236	3.24	15/8	Frag. of disfigured coin.
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59.	1921-10-14-237	3.88	16/10	Chopped frag. of Macedonian tribal coin: "Lete" (Standing satyr and nymph/incuse square).
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60.	1921-10-14-238	4.31	21/21	Chopped coin frag. of Naxos (Kantharos/incuse square) Not illustrated.
61.	1921-10-14-249	8.02	29/28	Wide-flan, incuse stater of Metapontum. Intentionally scored or chisel-cut across the obverse.
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Not Illustrated

1921-10-14-246 - 248, 250 - 260, 269 - 278, 292, 293	26 other wide-flan, incuse staters of Metapontum (type: ear of barley ), nearly all chipped or broken in two or more fragments
1921-10-14-239, 261 - 268, 279 - 287, 290, 291	18 staters and 2 drachms of wide-flan, incuse coinage of Sybaris (type: standing bull); nearly all chipped at the edges or broken in two or more fragments
1921-10-14-288, 289	2 wide-flan, incuse staters of Croton (type: tripod), both chipped

The TEI architecture allows the basic DTD to be extended. The files tarantoextensions.ent and tarantoextensions.ent implement the extensions used here. The XSL Stylesheets used to render the html and sorted tables are index.xsl, weighttype.xsl, and typeweight.xsl.