The Torah describes censuses being taken by collecting half-shekel coins from every adult male. A piece of silver currency was recently discovered southwest of Jerusalem and it’s possible it was used in such a census. Nathan Steinmeyer describes the find:
During salvage excavations in the Judean Hills, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered an extremely rare silver coin dating from the 6th or 5th century BCE, around the time that coins first began to circulate. Likely minted in the Aegean, the coin is one of the earliest ever found in Israel.
Intentionally cut in half in antiquity, the silver coin was minted with a square stamp embedded into one of its faces. It was only later that techniques were developed to create coins with protruding, double-sided faces. The introduction of coins marked a transition from using weighed pieces of silver as currency to more standardized coin issues. This was a slow process, however, as indicated by the coin being cut in half, which suggests the piece may have been used as traditional weighted measure. According to Robert Kool, head of the IAA’s Numismatics Department, “The coin is extremely rare, joining only half a dozen coins of its type that have been found in archaeological excavations in the country.”
Read more on Bible History Daily: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/2500-year-old-silver-coin-discovered-in-israel/