This final instalment brings the story to a close with a simple graphical method to show how tokens were the likely precursors of coins and all currency. The only difference is that tokens are issued by individuals or small groups of people for local use and coins and currency are issued by a state or official body and defined to be current by law. Both tokens and coins rely on rules and an understanding of how they are to be used. The token story is bookended with a neolithic clay cone from Beldibi c.9000 BC and a stone cone used in a Bedfordshire pub in 1990.
BNS Research Blog 
I have found these three articles quite fascinating. I have learned a bit of history and I have learned about x-ray tomography. What the articles appear to do is extend the history of numismatics (the study of coins and tokens) from about 700BC to about 9000BC. That is a giant leap of faith in anybody’s book. If I understand correctly a token was first used to record quantity, then to value quantity and finally to enable value transfer. In the article attempts were made to define tokens and then to define coins. This, to me, seems unnecessary. How many times in our history has coinage (official) been issued by more than one conflicting ‘official’ ruler. All have been treated as ‘coinage’ but under different ‘official rulers’. Perhaps some are ‘coinage’ and others ‘tokens’, but this division has not seemed important to the overall study.
As I say I have been fascinated, but really what I find difficult to understand is that, apparently, no other comments have been posted, especially from professional numismatists. Am I missing something?
Hi Eric,
Glad you found the three blogs of interest, and thanks for the comments and observations. The original talk was 45 minutes long, and was presented to an audience of token collectors (many of whom also collect coins), so a lot of ground could be covered very quickly and the three blogs maintain that brevity.
The lack of comments to items posted on the Blog is not unusual. The BNS Blog is only a few years old and as its title includes British Numismatic Society, notes that stray outside this remit won’t be discovered by the wider numismatic world until it is indexed by Google and someone actively looks for it.
The BNS webmaster, Rob Page, has data on views and downloads for the Blog. The short and long-term viewing statistics will give a measure of the interest in a topic and more generally the success of the Blog as a numismatic repository. The latter will likely take a few decades.