Ancient Monetization

Surely, ‘money is one of the most timeless, all-pervading, and arbitrary inventionsin human history’ (Haselgrove and Krmnicek 2012, 235), yet it is possible to differentiate three different stages of monetary use and the estimation of value. Exchange is considered as the key to assessing the precise value of commodities. Hence it is of primary importance to understand how exchange was conducted. During the first stage, which began at an uncertain date within the Stone Age, various substances were considered as valuables and could have functioned as some form of currency, yet their range was limited by many factors, not least by social constraints. This was still very much the case during the Copper Age, even if metals now offered new and fantastic possibilities for defining value and creating money. On present evidence it cannot
be established whether objects standardised by size (aes formatum) existed on a large scale at this period. A relationship between value and mass was apparently not yet established. Only in the Bronze Age did the invention of weights and scales enable such a nexus, marking the second stage. This step created a highly precise medium for exchange, as a method of payment and a standard of value. Metal was clearly now a currency. These innovations were more revolutionary than the appearance of coins in the Iron Age, the threshold of the third stage of fundamental monetary developments.

The study departs from recent suggestions that locally produced balance weights from settlement sites in central Portugal, dated to the Final Bronze Age (1200-900) are based on a Late Bronze Age Syrian/Ugaritic metrological system (13th-12th c. BCE). These proposals have been based on the comparative studies of the weights of these Atlantic objects, but have not been examined rigorously in comparison with Near Eastern metrological systems, despite the claims they make. This has repercussions for the conclusions drawn so far.
The present study has a threefold aim. First, it examines this hypothesis of a Syrian derivation of metrological systems underlying the local production of balance weights in Atlantic Iberian settlements (ca. 1200-900 BCE). Secondly, it investigates whether these local balance weights bear any metrological relationship to those balance weights of Phoenician typologies encountered in Atlantic Iberian sites of the colonial period (8th-6th c. BCE). Thirdly, taking as a case study the better documented evidence from Alcácer do Sal, it examines for the first time whether these metrological systems, in use for centuries in Atlantic Iberia, underlie the metrologies of the earliest, pre-Roman, locally-minted coinage, which follows Phoenician iconography but is struck using the syllabary of the indigenous languages, developed in the 8th c. BCE as an adaptation of the Phoenician script. The study suggests that the dating of the earliest group of balance weights needs to be lowered.  In addition, it documents a likely derivation of the metrological system of coinage from the Phoenician milieu of Iberia, rather than the 3r dc. BCE Carthaginian metrologies, as advocated so far. This is supported by the metrological continuity between balance weights and coinage,  and the latter's iconography, as the present study documents.

This paper focuses on two counter-examples for which highly valuable coins issued to pay Greek mercenaries were poorly used on the markets. Either – and that is a radical motive indeed – because soldiers were not or poorly paid in coins (as it was the case with the Anabasis of the Ten-Thousands, 401-399 BC), or – and that must not be underestimated as well – because the vast amount of precious coins issued and given to them were brought back in contexts leaving few opportunities to make a monetary use of these coins, which are thus better understood as special purpose money (as with the bulk of the Thasian type tetradrachms struck at the end of the 2nd and the first half of the 1st c. BC).

“Silver, Money and Credit” gathers a collection of contributions by leading specialists on the role of silver in Ancient Mesopotamia. The volume is a tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek, professor emeritus at the VU University Amsterdam.

The thematic core area is the documentation concerning silver in cuneiform sources from first millennium BC Babylonia, and how this vast body of primary sources can be employed in order to shed light on aspects of the economy. It thus coincides with the honouree’s main area of research. The volume is rounded off by comparative material mainly from other periods in Mesopotamian history, rendering justice to his broad range of interest. The scope of the volume thus extends from the first written records on the use of silver in Uruk to the Neo-Babylonian Empire’s apogee in the sixth century BC and further to insights to be gained from comparisons with early modern economies.

This paper aims to compare to sets of data: the amount of the Perisan treasuries captured by Alexander the Great and the amount of gold and silver coinages issued during the lifetime of Alexander or with his name up to the end of the 4th c. BC. The first is given by literary sources while the second one is less immediate since it demands to make some extrapolations and leaves room for uncertainty. It is tempting to correlate the 180,000 talents (in silver equivalent) found by Alexander at Persepolis and Susa (mainly) with the likely grand total of coins struck in the name of Alexander the Great (c. 3,000 obverse dies for tetradrachms, c. 3,300 for drachms and c. 1,200 for staters = 196,000 talents of equivalent silver if the average productivity of each obverse die was 30,000 coins). Given the level of uncertainty of these calculations, caution is clearly required.

This paper offers a summary of past research in quantifying Hellenistic coinages. Beyond the methodological debate and the shift of mentalities between c. 1975 and now, we compare results got by many authors, focusing on the more substantial coinages of the time (Alexander the Great, Seleucids, Philip II, Athenian stephanephoroi, Lysimachus, Demetrios Poliorketes, Miletus and Chalcis. We opt for an average value of 20,000 coins per obverse die (because that is a value we could possibly divide or multiply by two, but not by three) and for the equivalent of Attic weight drachm as the standard of comparison. Nothing absurd emerges from the comparison of the hundreds of die-studies already produced for Hellenistic coinages. Quite the contrary. And the same is true when comparing the Hellenistic results with what has been tempted for the Roman world (Duncan-Jones). The issues of Taras, Case-studies for civic coinages include the issues of Rhodes, Phaselis, Maroneia and Athens, and for royal isues, Philip II, Alexander the Great (Lampsakos [Lampsacus]), Demetrius Poliorketes, Pyrrhus, the Attalids and Mithridates Eupator. The final paradox of these quantitative studies is the following: while the general tendency of quantitative studies of ancient coinages is clearly to calculate larger number of struck coins than those hitherto postulated, at the same time these large numbers will often appear as inadequate if placed within the hypothetical perspective of a highly monetized society.

Les philosophes de l’Antiquité évoquent assez peu la monnaie. Pourtant, un examen attentif des rares passages où elle apparaît chez Aristote, Diogène le Cynique et Platon révèle qu’elle n’est pas à leurs yeux un instrument quelconque, seulement destiné à faciliter les échanges économiques. Tous s’interrogent en effet sur sa nature : ils s’accordent à voir en elle un instrument de mesure conventionnel, mais se séparent sur la nature de son caractère conventionnel et sur le sens qu’ils lui accordent. Leurs positions respectives varient selon l’ampleur et l’importance de la dimension politique qu’ils accordent à l’animal humain.

What is money the measurement of?Aristotle, Diogenes and Plato, or the money convention in the horizon of politicsAncient Greek philosophers do not say much about money. But a close scrutiny of the scarce references to money in the works of Aristotle, Diogenes the Cynic and Plato shows that these philosophers do not consider it a mere economical instrument aimed at making trade easier. They all investigate the nature of money and understand it as a conventional standard. Nevertheless, they do not agree on what its conventional dimension is and means. My claim is that their respective positions depend on the importance and meaning they assign to the political dimension of the human being.

Roman unofficial imitation coins should be considered tokens in the sense that they functioned as an unofficial fiduciary currency and were (probably) made by non-government entities. The very existence of such token coinages is itself a sign of a highly monetised economy. An analogous shortage of small change and counterfeiting occurred in the 18th and 19th century in Great Britain and North America, and provides a well-documented model to better understand how Roman imitations may have functioned. This model suggests that the acceptability of imitations, often intentionally made to look old and worn, may have depended on the size of individual transactions, that imitations were valued differently on a regional level, and that large hoards of imitations could, amongst other things, reflect a sort of wholesale trade in small change. Above all, for such imitations to function at all, coin users must intuitively accept the idea of a token or fiduciary monetary system.
Key-words: archaeology, coins, counterfeiting, economy, imitations, monetisation, numismatics, tokens.

This paper contextualizes and critically examines the incorporation of transactional features into two popular mobile social media apps: Instagram and Snapchat. It examines how mobile social media acts as an interface between culture and commerce. We situate this interface within a larger political economic context in which tech companies are embracing 'fintech' to drive growth. We argue that mobile social media platforms play a unique role in monetising personal data and context awareness through their development of 'transactional affordance'-a term we develop to understand new features allowing users to connect content to forms of payment. We argue that the success of these affordances is tied to labour associated with the 'performative authenticity' of social-media influencers. Our first case study examines the recent development of 'shopping' and 'checkout' features on Instagram, and the significance of this feature for the economic growth of parent company Facebook. We then look at how the specific development of augmented reality features on Snapchat serve as the basis for new transactional affordances in everyday contexts. We conclude the paper by arguing that the contextual commerce these phenomena entail signals a shift to a transactional culture in which everyday interactions become opportunities for consumption.

Since his study on Les Alexandres d'argent en Asie Mineure (Journal des Savants, 1986), Georges Le Rider has often insisted on and favoured a fiscal explanation for Greek coinages. Countermarks and overstrikes are likely to be connected with exchange rates (e.g.: at Susa under the Parthians, at Byzantium and Chalcedon c. 235 BC). He paid a special attention to closed monetary systems (the incuse coins in Magna Grecia in the 6th c. BC, Egypt under the Ptolemies, the Attalids and the cistophori) or to issuing powers which proceeded to a double coinage, one for the inner circulation and another for external purposes (Macedonia since Philip II onwards). He also investigated cases of fiscal interest as the Ephesian imitations issued by the city of Arados. Central is the idea that profit is at the very heart of coinage. These studies powerfully argue against a too "primitivist" view of the exchanges in Hellenistic times but, in the same time, they take distances with the commercial explanations proposed until a recent past for the same coinages (Rostovtzeff, Newell and Thompson).

he Kh. Abu Rish site (map coordinates 10759:16270) was excavated in
1990 and 1992.1 It is situated in the eastern part of the ‘Anun valley, northeast of Hebron, near the intersection of two ancient roads: Teqo‘a-Mount Hebron, and Aloné Mamré-Bani Na‘im (Hirschfeld 1980: 78-84). The valley and Beit ‘Anun village preserve the biblical name Beth-anoth (Joshua
15:59). The ‘Anun valley which separates the Hebron Mountains from the
Judean Desert is one of the most fertile areas in the Hebron region, with
several large springs. The many rock-cut water cisterns attest the agricultural
character of the settlement there. Archaeological surveys in the valley
revealed a continuum of settlement from the Chalcolithic period to the
present time (Kochavi 1972: 56-58). The settled population in the ‘Anun
valley reached a zenith in the Byzantine period, when three churches were built there (Magen 1990: 275-286; 1992).

This paper deals with the accounting money during Hellenistic times. It argues against the danger to take for real coins any quotations of value expressed in monetary terms. In particular, the words argurion or chrysion (as opposed to a arguron or chryson, without iota) don't have the restricted meaning of monetized silver or gold but, more genera. They signify more generally, signifies "expressed as the equivalent in silver or gold coins" as it is clear from many epigraphical and literary evidence. In several cases (the Persian treasuries captured by Alexander the Great, the Thracian ruler Seuthes, the gift from Ptolemy to the Rhodians, the penalties paid by Antiochus III and the Etolians to the Romans), the vast amounts of money evoked by textual evidence is not supported by corresponding coinages in terms of value. And this can also be true for small amounts of money as with the obols of Theagenes of Thasos. Such a revision of the words argurion and chrusion modifies the vision we can have of how monetized the Hellenistic world was.