Coins, money and exchange in the Roman world. A cultural-economic perspective

Aarts, J.G.

doi:10.1017/s1380203805211625

Cited by 64 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Marking of land may be accomplished through various forms of capital investment, including the installation of agricultural facilities (e.g., Adler 1996:362–363; Sullivan and Downum 1991) and the construction of burial and nonburial monuments (e.g., Arnold and Murray 2002). The marking of objects can be accomplished with the use of seals or maker's marks (e.g., Windes 1984), the execution of certain decorative styles, and other practices (e.g., Aarts 2005; Wobst 1977). Although property rights do leave tangible traces in the archaeological record, they are not unambiguous, and identifying the economic factors that underlie the origin and development of ancient property rights is a formidable but worthy inferential challenge for archaeologists (Gilman 1998:227–228).…”

Section: Conceptualizing Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Property, Identity, and Macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest

Bayman

Sullivan

2008

American Anthropologist

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Archaeology provides a compelling perspective on the evolution of property rights and macroeconomy in precapitalist societies that lacked systems of writing. Most interpretations of macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest have focused on interaction networks that emanated from "heartlands" where intensive agriculturalists were aggregated in towns along major streams. Although archaeologists are aware of communities in "hinterland" territories, they rarely consider their political economies. As a remedy, we apply common-pool-resource (CPR) theory to investigate hypothesized linkages between property rights and social identity in two hinterlands in Arizona: the Papagueria and the Grand Canyon. Our analyses indicate, first, that from circa C.E. 850 to C.E. 1350, local communities negotiated their social identities in a macroeconomy of fluctuating resource values and, second, that incentives for privatizing peripheral territories intensified in some areas during periods of economic competition. These findings underscore the critical role of archaeology in modeling property rights in precapitalist societies. [

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Section: Conceptualizing Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Property, Identity, and Macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest

Bayman

Sullivan

2008

American Anthropologist

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“… 5 Aarts 2005; Verboven 2009; Von Reden 2010; Howgego 2013; Rowan 2013; 2016. Burnett and Molinari 2015: 96 suggest, but do not pursue, the approach for early Roman coinage.…”

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“… 10 Parry and Bloch 1989; for their influence on the study of Greece, see Von Reden 1995; Kurke 1999; Seaford 2004; for Rome, see especially Aarts 2005 and the discussion following his article. Parry and Bloch's model remains fundamental for anthropologists, see Maurer 2006: 18; I disagree with the critique of Şaul 2005 that the model offers little more than a reformulation of Polanyi's views on money: while Polanyi described how different modes of exchange characterised societies, Parry and Bloch focus on the interaction between such modes within single societies.…”

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The Social History of Early Roman Coinage

Bernard

2018

J. Rom. Stud.

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Fiscal explanations often given for Rome's first coins fail to account for the shape of monetary development. Nothing in the mid-republican budget matches the small scale and sporadic production of Roman coins during the early third century, or coinage's rapid expansion in the lead-up to the Second Punic War. Instead, I locate early Roman coinage within a broader reconfiguration of wealth and political power during the early phases of imperial expansion. Coins facilitated the exchange of wealth in the absence of strong social ties; conquest opened up Roman society to vast wealth of this order while also sparking debate about wealth's integration into the political community. Archaeological and textual evidence permits us to trace the contested and uneven development of elite accommodation to impersonal wealth during the third century. This context, I argue, offers the best explanation for Rome's initial coins.

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“… 6 Buttrey 1999: 527; Aarts 2005: 6; although Hollander 2007 identifies a ‘rural’ monetary zone that only saw increased demand for coin in the late Republic. …”

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Ambiguity, Iconology and Entangled Objects on Coinage of the Republican World

Rowan

2016

J. Rom. Stud.

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Abstract:The provincial coinage of the Roman Empire has proven to be a rich source for studying civic experiences of Roman rule, but the coins struck outside Rome during the expansion of the Roman Republic have, by contrast, received relatively little attention. This article aims to begin redressing this neglect by exploring the active role of coinage in conceptualising and representing Roman Republican power. A variety of approaches to this neglected material are employed in order to highlight its potential as a source. Ambiguity, iconology or the social life of images, and entanglement are used as frameworks to explore case studies from across the Roman Republican world, from Spain to Syria. This approach to coin imagery under the Republic reveals the complexity and variety in which the Roman presence, and Roman imperium, was represented before the advent of the principate. IntroductionIn 'Notes towards an anthropology of money' Keith Hart observes that communities operate through culture or meanings held in common, and that 'money is, with language, the most important vehicle for this collective sharing'.1 Money is a media that enables the commensuration of differing value systems (crucial to conquest or contact situations) and whose circulation defines particular political and/or social groupings. Money contributes to a sense of commonality, and its iconography encourages collective traditions, values and memory.2 Money is, in short, one of several media that actively contribute to the formation and maintenance of a community and its traditions. It achieves this by being used, handled, seen andThe following abbreviations are used: ACIP: Villaronga, L. and J. Benages, (eds). (2011) These functions were also present in the Roman world. Howgego has recently demonstrated the connection between coinage and Roman expansion, and the detailed study of the site of Lattara in Gaul has revealed how Roman conquest within this one settlement lead to an increased presence of money in order to facilitate exchange and commensuration between differing value systems.4 Although site finds often only contain coins that have been lost or discarded, and the archaeological record is far from complete, the presence of significant quantities of coins at excavated settlements (whether they be large cities like Athens or Corinth, Roman legionary camps like Numantia, or smaller settlements like Lattara or the mining village of La Loba) demonstrates that coinage did have a role in everyday life. 5 The extent of rural coin use is more controversial, but here new studies, at least for the imperial period, suggest coin use was higher than has originally believed. 6Studies of Roman coinage have demonstrated how these media enabled Roman expansion and acted as 'monuments in miniature' that expressed and reinforced cultural values.7 Imperial coins commonly carried imagery focused on the imperial family. The (mostly bronze) coinage struck by individual cities in the Roman Empire, labelled provincial coinage in modern scholarship, carried type...

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Coins, money and exchange in the Roman world. A cultural-economic perspective

Cited by 64 publications

References 6 publications

Property, Identity, and Macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest

Property, Identity, and Macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest

The Social History of Early Roman Coinage

Ambiguity, Iconology and Entangled Objects on Coinage of the Republican World

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