All I know is this was from the estate of the late great Dr. Walker Professor of History, Geology, Archeology at  Marshall University Huntington West Virginia.  It was one of thousands, but his one  with only bare-bones information. Literally, it had 43-45 AD written on the holder. He dug this up himself in one of many travels around the world. It is Authentic and crude silver. I say this because I cleaned it once and realized it has a glob of pure copper in it. Refining techniques were not quite "refined" back then.