Richard Marsden Reece, FSA (born 1939) is a numismatist and retired academic.^[1]

Biography

Reece completed a degree in biochemistry at University College London in 1961, before moving to Wadham College, Oxford, where he completed a diploma in education the following year. He taught at the private St John's School in Leatherhead for three years before becoming Head of Chemistry at St George’s School in Harpenden in 1966.^[2]

He left teaching in 1968 to undertake a doctorate at Wadham College, Oxford,^[2] which he completed in 1972 with a thesis tiled "A survey of denominations and categories in the currency of the western Roman Empire, with special reference to hoards and site finds in Britain".^[3] He joined the London Institute of Archaeology as a lecturer in 1970. Promoted to a senior lecturer in 1981, he was made Reader in Late Roman Archaeology and Numismatics. He has been an emeritus reader at UCL since retiring in 1999.^[1][4]

Reece periods

Reece defined 21 date ranges for coins of the Roman period, now called Reece periods. The British Museum uses these (with two more added later) when comparing different discovery sites.^[5]

Honours and awards

On 5 May 1969, Reece was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA).^[6] He was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society (RNS) in 2003. The RNS presented him with Medal of the Royal Numismatic Society six years later.^[1] In 2014, he was awarded the British Academy's Derek Allen Prize for numismatics.^[7]

Selected works

• Reece, Richard (1987). Coinage in Roman Britain (1st ed.). London: Seaby Publications. ISBN 9780900652868.
• Reece, Richard (2002). The Coinage of Roman Britain (2nd ed.). Cheltenham: The History Press. ISBN 978-0752425238.