problems in the political economy of archaic greek coinage / peter van alfen

7/23/2019 Problems in the political economy of archaic Greek coinage / Peter van Alfen

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Tom VII

MUZEUM NARODOWE W KRAKOWIE

SEKCJA NUMIZMATYCZNAKOMISJI ARCHEOLOGICZNEJ PAN

ODDZIA W KRAKOWIE

Krakw 2012


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MUZEUM NARODOWE W KRAKOWIESEKCJA NUMIZMATYCZNA

KOMISJI ARCHEOLOGICZNEJ PANODDZIA W KRAKOWIE

Krakw 2012

Tom VII


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Komitet redakcyjny / Editorial Commitee:

Peter van Alfen, Aleksander Bursche, Georges Depeyrot, Zoa Goubiew,

Bogumia Haczewska, Wiesaw Kaczanowicz, Elbieta Korczyska, Adam Makiewicz,Mariusz Mielczarek, Ji Militk, Janusz A. Ostrowski, Maciej Salamon

Redakcja / Editorial Board:

Redaktor / Editor in Chief Jarosaw BodzekZastpca redaktora / Associate Editor Mateusz WoniakSekretarze / Secretaries Kamilla Twardowska, Elbieta Korczyska, Kamil Kopij

Redaktor tematyczny / Theme Editor:

Peter van Alfen

Redaktor jzykowy / Linguistic Editor:

Peter van Alfen, Raymond Shindler

Recenzenci / Reviewers:

Bartosz Awianowicz, Mateusz Bogucki, Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert, Barbara Butent-Stefaniak,Witold Garbaczewski, Robert Wilson Hoge, Agata A. Kluczek, Vlastimil Novak,

Micha Parczewski, Borys Paszkiewicz, Zenon Piech, Nicholas K. Rutter,Sawomir Sprawski, Vladimir Stolba, Eliza Walczak, Marcin Wooszyn

Redaktor prowadzcy / Leading Editor:

Anna Kowalczyk

Adjustacja i korekta tekstu / Editing and Proofreading:Agnieszka Grzesiak-Kozina

Tumaczenia / Translations:

Jarosaw Bodzek, Marcin Fijak, Piotr Gierowski

Opracowanie graczne / Graphic Design:

Luiza Berdak

Adres redakcji / Address of the Editorial Ofce:

Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie

ul. Jzefa Pisudskiego 1231-109 Krakw

tel. (+48) 12 422 68 80e-mail: [email protected]

www.muzeum.krakow.pl

Wyczn odpowiedzialno za przestrzeganie praw autorskich dotyczcych materiau ilustracyjnego ponosz autorzy tekstw.Authors of the texts bear the sole responsibility for observing the copyright illustrations.

Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie i Autorzy, 2012

ISSN 1426-5435


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SPIS TRECI / CONTENTS

9 Nota od redakcji / Note from the Editors

ARTYKUY / ARTICLES

PETER VAN ALFEN13 Problems in the Political Economy of Archaic Greek Coinage

31 Problemy ekonomii politycznej archaicznego mennictwa greckiego

DOROTA GORZELANY37 Arethusa Cups in the Collection of the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. The Coin as a Decorative Element in Pottery44 Czarki Aretuzy z kolekcji Muzeum Ksit Czartoryskich w Krakowie. Moneta jako element

dekoracyjny ceramiki

WILLIAM M. STANCOMB

49 Some Rare or Unpublished Coins from the North Black Sea53 Kilka rzadkich i niepublikowanych monet z regionu pnocnych wybrzey Morza Czarnego

KIRILL MYZGIN, GEORGIY BEIDIN57 Finds of Bosporan Coins in the Territory of the East-European Barbaricum77 Znaleziska monet bosporaskich na obszarze wschodnioeuropejskiego Barbaricum

ARKADIUSZ DYMOWSKI93 A Roman Antoninianus of Egnatia Mariniana Found in the Kujavian Region. The Third Century Silver Coinage in the Territory of the Przeworsk Culture101 Rzymski antoninian Egnatii Mariniany znaleziony na Kujawach. Trzeciowieczne monety srebrne

na terenie kultury przeworskiej

ANNA BOCHNAK, DOROTA MALARCZYK105 The Early-Medieval Silver Hoard of Coins and Ornaments Found

at Babiskie Lasy in the Collection of the National Museum in Krakow121 Wczesnoredniowieczny skarb monet i ozdb srebrnych z Babiskich Lasw w zbiorach

Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie

DAGMAR GROSSMANNOV129 Morawskie denary Przemysa Ottokara II (124712531278)146 Moravian Denarii of Pemysl Otakar II (124712531278)


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RADOSAW GAZISKI, GENOWEFA HOROSZKO153 The Ducal Grifn in the Coinage of West Pomerania176 Gryf ksicy na monetach zachodniopomorskich

MATERIAY / MATERIALS

JAROSAW BODZEK, AGATA SZTYBER187 Znalezisko denara legionowego Marka Antoniusza w okolicach wsi Dzielna, gm. Opoczno192 A Find of a Legionary Mark Anthony Denarius in the Vicinity of Dzielna, gm. Opoczno

VALANTIN NAUMOVI RIABCEVI197 Znaleziska brakteatw, imitujcych kuckie dirhamy, z terytorium wspczesnej Biaorusi205 The Finds of Bracteats, Imitations of Cuc Dirhams, from the Territory of Belarus

AGATA SZTYBER, MATEUSZ WONIAK211 Monety z cmentarzyska wczesnoredniowiecznego w Modlnicy,

stan. 5, gm. Wielka Wie, pow. krakowski219 Coins from the Early-Medieval Burial Ground at Modlnica, Site no. 5, gm.Wielka Wie, Cracow County

VARIA

MICHA WOJENKA227 Zapomniane naczynie. Kilka uwag o pojemniku na skarb srebrny z jaskini

Okopy Wielkiej, Dolnej w Ojcowie235 A Forgotten Vessel. A Few Notes on the Silver Hoard Container Found in the Cave Jaskinia Okopy Wielka, Dolnaat Ojcw

RECENZJE / REVIEWS

WILLIAM M. STANCOMB243 Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Poland. Volume III. The National Museum in Cracow. Part 4. Sarmatia Bosporus, Editor, Jaroslaw Bodzek (Krakw 2006)

PAWE ZAWORA245 Ian A. Carradice, Theodore V. Buttrey, The Roman Imperial Coinage,

volume II Part 1, second fully revised edition. From AD 69-96, Vespasian

to Domitian. Spink, Londyn 2007 Bernhard Woytek,Die Reichsprgung des Kaisers Traianus (98117),

Moneta Imperii Romani, vol. 14. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wien 2010


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WOJCIECH BORUCH250 Agata Aleksandra Kluczek, VNDIQVE VICTORES. Wizja rzymskiego wadztwa

nad wiatem w mennictwie zotego wieku Antoninw i doby kryzysu

III wieku studium porwnawcze, Katowice 2009 Constantina Katsari, The Roman Monetary System: the Eastern Provinces from

the First to the Third Century AD, Cambridge New York Melbourne 2011

HELLE W. HORSNS257 Renata Cioek,Die Fundmnzen der rmischen Zeit in Polen. Schlesien, Collection Moneta 83, Wetteren 2008 Andrzej Romanowski,Die Fundmnzen der rmischen Zeit in Polen.

Rechtsufriges Masowien und Podlachien, Collection Moneta 84, Wetteren 2008

ANDRZEJ ROMANOWSKI260 Arkadiusz Dymowski,Znaleziska monet rzymskich z terenu Polski rejestrowane w pierwszych latach XXI wieku. Aspekty rdoznawcze, Eternum, Zielona Gra 2011

KRONIKA / CHRONICLE

ELBIETA KORCZYSKA, PAULINA TARADAJ267 Kronika Gabinetu Numizmatycznego Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie (20092011)272 The National Museum in Krakow Coin Room Chronicle (20092011)

PAULINA TARADAJ279 WystawaRarytasy numizmatyczne ze zbiorw Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie283 The ExhibitionNumismatic Rarities from the Collection of the National Museum

in Krakow

NEKROLOGI / OBITUARIES

TOMASZ BYLICKI289 Dr Aleksandra Krzyanowska (19282012). Wspomnienie pomiertne297 Dr Aleksandra Krzyanowska (19282012). In Memory

JAROSAW BODZEK

305 Wspomnienie o prof. dr. Peterze Berghausie (19192012)309 In Memory of Prof. Dr Peter Berghaus (19192012)


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Tom VII

Krakw 2012

PETER VAN ALFEN

American Numismatic Society, New York

Problems in the Political Economy

of Archaic Greek Coinage

INTRODUCTION

Coins rst appeared in the Mediterranean in Lydia (western modern Turkey)around 625 BCE (PLATE I. 1).1Their production was probably a response to

both an abundance of electrum panned out of the Pactolus River near the Lydiancapital of Sardis, and the inherent difculties of using this natural gold-silver al-

loy as a monetary metal.2The practice of striking electrum coins spread quicklyto nearby Greek cities, like Ephesus and Miletus. By c. 550 BCE, electrum was

being abandoned as a coining metal in preference of silver and to a lesser extentgold; by 525 BCE, dozens of poleis around the Aegean and in the Greek westwere producing coins, a list of mints that was extended remarkably by the endof the archaic period.3Thus within a couple generations after the Lydian inven-tion of coinage, it became primarily a Greek phenomenon. As such it was tightly

1The dating of the earliest coins remains controversial. In a recent reappraisal of the evidence from theArtemision of Ephesus, M. KERSCHNER, K. KONUK, The chronology of the electrum coins found in theArtemision of Ephesus: the contribution of the archaeological nd context, [in:] GITLER ET AL. (eds.), WhiteGold,Jerusalem (forthcoming) forcefully argue for a start date c. 630 BCE.

2N. CAHILL ET AL, Preliminary analysis of electrum coins and natural gold form Sardis, [in:] H.GITLER ET AL. (eds.), White Gold, Jerusalem, forthcoming, however, present evidence that it was pure gold, notelectrum that was panned out of the Pactolus. If this is correct, our thinking about the reasons for the beginningof electrum coinage, namely the transaction chaos associated with using native electrum (cf. Wallace 1987), needto be seriously reassessed. To date, it has been thought that natural Lydian electrum is, on average, 70% gold and30% silver, but this can vary widely. Because of the extreme differential in the commodity value of gold versussilver (c. 1:10), using nuggets of unknown and varying composition as money would require lengthy testing to

determine the exact value of each piece in a transaction. Coinage, as a means of pre-determining and guarantee-ing the value of each piece, may have been a solution to this problem. For a recent overview of the literatureand divergent views on this problem see: S. VON REDEN, Money in the ancient economy: a survey of recentresearch,Klio84, 2002, pp. 141174 and M.S. PEACOCK, 2006. The origins of money in Ancient Greece: thepolitical economy of coinage and exchange, Cambridge Journal of Economics30, 2006, pp. 637650.

3R. OSBORNE, Greece in the making, 1200479 BC. New York 1996, pp. 25355 provides a handy list of115 poleis that were minting coins by 480 BCE.


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implicated in the (often unpleasant) social, political, and economic changes thatmany poleis experienced throughout the sixth century as these communitiesdeveloped new types of social registers, forms of governance, law codes, andmarkets.

From an economic perspective, the invention of coinage did not make a tre-mendous, initial impact.4Many Aegean economies were probably already mon-etized to some degree, using chopped bits of precious metal (Hacksilber) to per-form transactions, a practice inherited from the Near East, and which continuedlong after coins became more widespread.5 Although Hacksilber was privatelyand anonymously produced, users had developed measures to ensure metal pu-rity and facilitate weighing to speed transactions; it need not have been a clumsymonetary instrument.6The critical difference between Hacksilber and coinage wasthe role that authorities had in the production (and distribution) of the monetaryinstruments. The application of a stamp to individual pre-weighed, rened piecesof metal announcing the producer was transformative: the monetary instrumentcould now advance upon levels of (political) symbolism that were unattainablewith anonymous bits.

Because coins are both economic material and political symbol, their produc-tion, distribution, and consumption can be both economically and politically moti-vated, thus the interpretation of individual series of coins, or coinage qua coinage,is a complex matter, one that requires careful consideration of interrelated motives.

4This is controversial. R. SEAFORD,Money and the early Greek mind: Homer, philosophy, tragedy,Cam-bridge 2004 and D. SCHAPS, The invention of coinage and the monetization of ancient Greece,Ann Arbor 2004both argue at length that the Greek adoption of coinage was something radically new; both, by different means,also deny the existence of money before coinage. G. LE RIDER, La naissance de la monnaie: pratiques mon-taires de lOrient ancien,Paris 2001 and J.H. KROLL, Silver in Solons laws, [in:] R. ASHTON, S. HURTER(eds.), Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory of Martin Jessop Price,London 1998, pp. 22532; IDEM, Ob-

servations on monetary instruments in pre-coinage Greece, [in:] M. BALMUTH (ed.),Hacksilber to Coinage:New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and Greece,ANS Numismatic Studies no. 24,New York2001, pp. 7791; IDEM, The monetary use of weighed bullion in archaic Greece, [in:] W.V. HARRIS (ed.),The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans, Oxford 2008, pp. 1237 discuss the monetary role of bullionand Hacksilber in Aegean economies before coinage; for Near Eastern evidence see C.M. THOMPSON, Sealedsilver in Iron Age Cisjordan and the invention of coinage, OJA22, 2003, pp. 67107 and J.H. KROLL, Mon-etary instruments in antiquity before coinage, [in:] M. AMANDRY, D. BATESON (eds.),A survey of numismaticresearch 20022007, Glasgow 2009, pp. 58.

5Hoards containing both Hacksilber and coins are common on the fringes of the Greek world well into theRoman period. Similar hoards from the Greek world are mostly archaic and provide important evidence that coinsand Hacksilber were used together. See, for example, a large recently published hoard (Coin HoardsI.3; X.203)from Colophon dating to the later sixth century (H. KIM, J.H. KROLL, A Hoard of archaic coins of Colophon

and unminted Silver (CH I.3), AJN20, 2008, pp. 53104). The Hacksilber in this case likely served as smallchange below the smallest denomination of the coins.6Reducing transaction costs is seen as one of the great advantages of coinage over Hacksilber, but as

THOMPSON, Sealed silver... has shown, pre-weighed, sealed bags of Hacksilber could perform the samefunction. This reduction in transaction costs, however, could be offset by the prevalence of counterfeit coins;along with the introduction of coinage came counterfeits necessitating, for the cautious seller, a careful check ofall coins offered.


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PROBLEMS IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARCHAIC GREEK COINAGE

.

I use political economy as shorthand for the interrelationships of political andeconomic aims in the production of archaic coinage. I am less concerned herewith the distribution and consumption of coinage since the original meanings andintentions of production can be lost or reinterpreted as the object passes throughcountless hands across time and space.7I suggest that two common methodologiesfor studying archaic coinage numismatic (deductive) and non-numismatic (in-ductive) and two common systems of interpretation the political and economic

together fall short of asking the right questions, or noting how truly different ar-chaic coinage is from that which follows. Lost is the sense that archaic coinage wasa developingrather than developedmedium of political and economic exchange.This then is a preliminary exploration of ways in which we might cultivate alterna-tive methodologies, which are necessarily grounded in the numismatic evidence,

but which are simultaneously open to theoretical insights in political and economicbehavior propagated beyond the immediate scholarly elds of numismatics andancient history.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE US CENTIn order to help set the stage for what follows, I offer a modern example of po-

litical and economic interrelations in the production of coinage. I have chosen thisexample because the coin is familiar to many readers, but it also amply illustrateshow our expectations about the way in which institutions governing coin produc-tion should behave are not always fullled.

The year 2009 marked the centennial of the US Lincoln cent (the penny),currently the worlds longest-lived coin.8The decision to place the assassinatedPresident Abraham Lincoln on the 1909 cent (PLATE I. 2) was a deant and pro-vocative act, a departure from US coining tradition that had deliberately avoided

incendiary iconography, like dead (or living) presidents, in order to preserve thesanctied notions of democracy and its refutation of everything royal. The onlyhuman gure allowed to grace US coins up to that point was Liberty, who in clas-sical allegorical fashion was depicted as a young(ish) woman in various guises,including, rather sadly, wearing Native American headdress (PLATE I. 3). True toform, President Theodore Roosevelt (19011909) was the bold actor, who admir-

7For complications in the post-production use and meaning of manufactured commodities in the archaic

and classical periods see P.G. VAN ALFEN, Social controls, institutions and the regulation of commodities inclassical Aegean markets, Marburger Beitrge zur antiken Handels-, Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. 28,2011, pp. 197229.

8The following three paragraphs are based primarily on D. TAXAY, The United States Mint and coinage,New York 1966, chp 24 and D. TRIPP,Illegal Tender: gold, greed, and the mystery of the lost 1933 doubke eagle.New York, 2004, chp 1, and D. TRIPP, Fear and trembling and other discoveries: new information on AugustusSaint-Gaudens and Americas most beautiful coin,ANS Magazine2007, 6.3, pp. 2634.


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ing the artist Victor David Brenners bas relief portrait of Lincoln, used his politi-cal might to ensure its appearance on the penny in time for the centennial of Lin-colns birth in 1909. Lincoln was a safe choice to inaugurate this serious reversalfrom accepted practice the tragedy of his assassination and the seeming purity ofhis politics made him the most saint-like of all possible contenders but Rooseveltstill circumvented normal democratic procedures, like open debate, in order tohave his wish fullled. Roosevelt assuaged potential critics by insisting that theLincoln penny would be produced only for 1909; the immense popular support ofthe design has guaranteed its continuous production ever since.

Part of Roosevelts attraction to Brenners portrait was its artistic quality,something which had, much to the Presidents extreme embarrassment, been sore-ly lacking in US coinage. Declaring the nations coins atrociously hideous heembarked in 1905 on a coin beautication program, again side-stepping normal

procedure, and the Mints engravers, by enlisting the countrys best sculptors togive all of US coinage a make-over. This, he felt, would be yet another way to ad-vertise the growing power and prestige of the United States and its rightful claimto Old World respect. The rst coins of this program were released in 1907: Au-gustus St. Gaudens tour de force $20 and $10 gold coins (PLATE I. 45), andBela Lyon Pratts $5 and $2.50 gold coins (PLATE I. 67). The Brenner pennywas next in line, followed by James Frasers Buffalo nickel (1913) (PLATE I.8), Adolf Weinmans Mercury Head dime and Walking Liberty half dollar(1916) (PLATE I. 910), and Hermon MacNeils Standing Liberty quarter dollar(1916) (PLATE I. 11). Roosevelts gamble paid off; the coins were generally wellreceived, even by the politicians and bureaucrats he circumvented, and by break-ing a century-old taboo, he opened the door for the run of presidential portraitcoins used ever since in the US.

Despite Roosevelts disregard for the institutional procedures in place forchoosing coin designs, he had less interest in decisions concerning the monetaryfunction of the coinage, namely its weight, metal content, production volume, anddistribution. As the lowest denomination coin, the anchor of the monetary system,with considerable purchasing power in 1909, the cent was in great demand; theeconomy depended on a steady stream of pennies in order to function and grow. Inthe chaotic years before the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, andits subsequent control over money supply, determining the production numbers for

coins was a function of the Treasury Departments ability to measure (anticipated)demand against the supply and purchase price of monetary metals. While such cal-culations were normally the concern of lesser bureaucrats, high level politics couldcome into play if, for example, a shortage of small change caused unrest, or if therewas need to alter the metallic composition or weight of the coins.


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Over the course of the Lincoln cents lifetime, the US Congress has changedits metallic composition and weight ve times. Most of these changes were duringand soon after the Second World War in response to the need to conserve coppersupplies for the war effort. In 1982, however, as the price of commodity coppercontinue to spike, making it cost more to produce the cent then its denominationalvalue, Congress decided to ip the alloy: for most of its life, the cent was 95%copper, and 5% zinc; since 1982, the cent is 97.6% zinc and 2.4% copper. Becausezinc prices have risen in the last three decades, it now costs around two cents to

produce each penny.Today, the physical cent is all but a useless monetary instrument; long gone

are the days when one could purchase anything for a penny. Nevertheless, bil-lions are produced every year incurring a substantial loss to the US government.Why this is the case was a question that former Congressional Representative JimKolbe raised repeatedly in his lone wolf attempts to introduce legislation to kill the

penny, which again have recently been raised in light of the Canadians decisionto kill their cent. 9But as the monetary value of the cent has declined, its politicaland social value has increased, not only with the bicentennial of Lincolns birthin 2009, which saw the introduction of new reverse types for the cent commemo-rating Abraham Lincoln, still one of the United States most revered Presidents(PLATE I. 12), but also with politicians representing metal mining interests andwith those worried that eliminating the penny would lead to price increases fortheir constituents.10The cents once path-breaking iconography now serves as nomore than an excuse to keep the coin in production, and to shield the vested (eco-nomic) interests of some politicians and their supporters.

Among other things, this quick overview of the history of the Lincoln centillustrates the role of various institutions in the creation of a single coinage. But

despite our expectations that democratic institutions should operate in an almostmechanical, open, and rational fashion, especially in the production of somethingas seemingly cut and dried as coinage, this is not the case. We see, for example,individual elites acting successfully out of bounds on individual aspects of coinage(iconography and production prots) for the sake of personal agendas; we also seeindividual elites acting within bounds on other aspects (monetary function), butfailing to push their common good agendas forward. And we see the congressional

9

On Kolbes attempts to kill the penny in 2006 and the social, economic and political opposition he facedsee: http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/01/news/newsmakers/penny/index.htm (accessed 8 June 2012). On Canadasrecent elimination of its cent see: New York Times (New York edition), March 30, 2012, page B2, In Canada, theLowly Pennys Time to Shine Nears an End, and http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-04/news/ct-edit-penny-0404-jm-20120404_1_penny-problem-cheaper-penny-coins (accessed 8 June 2012).

10See n. 8 above, and: http://theweek.com/article/index/220747/time-to-stop-printing-the-dollar-bill (ac-cessed 8 June 2012).


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body as a whole making seemingly (ir)rational and (un)economical decisions aboutthe coin as a whole. Perhaps most importantly, we also sense how the political andeconomic motivations of individuals acting both within small groups and largerinstitutions cannot always be easily distinguished from one another, and how dif-cult it can be to align these motivations towards as single outcome. It is importantto note as well how these rationalizations and motivations can change over time.The 2012 Lincoln cent may not look much differently from its 1909 counterpart,

but it is an entirely different coinage, economically, socially, and politically.Before turning to the problems of archaic Greek coinage, I want to underscore

two points: the rst is that we should not lose sight of thepeoplemaking decisionsabout coinage, meaning we should expect at times personal exuberance, irratio-nality, and messy outcomes. The second has to do with our assumptions of whatcoinage is and who produces it. Decisions in the White House or the Treasury De-

partment concerning the production of coinage, and scholarly assessment of thesedecisions, all start with certain assumptions: that there is a general cultural andeconomic understanding of the function of coinage; an understanding of the roleof the state in the production of coinage; and a clear idea of what the state is. Formost periods and places where coins were produced (in the western world), theseare good starting assumptions. But not necessarily for the sixth century BCE: boththe coins and literary texts suggest that the use and meaning of coinage qua coin-age was still being negotiated along with other equally serious discussions aboutwhat the (political) community is and does. For this reason, we cannot always readarchaic coinage in the same way we do later coins, like an Augustan denarius orthe Lincoln cent; concepts like national identity, monetary policy, and eventhe state, if they existed at all, had signicantly different meanings. Nor can weassume that the negotiated solutions to the problems of coinage were the same in

all poleis, had the same outcomes, or happened at the same rate.

SYSTEMS OF INTERPRETATION: THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMICScholars, of course, are not unaware of the political and economic spectrums

of use and meaning in coinage; most every publication dealing with coinage touch-es on these issues to greater or lesser degrees. In the study of ancient Greek coin-age, however, it is possible to detect a large degree of polarization between twogeneral systems of interpretation for how the coins in question came to be: one that

tends to favor political explanations for their existence, and the other which favorseconomic explanations.Arguments for the political motivation and function of Greek coinage has de-

veloped along multiple, sometimes interrelated strands. Comparatively in worldnumismatics, much of (classical and Hellenistic) Greek coinage stands apart for its


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aesthetic qualities: the design, execution, and details of the engraving would ap-pear to attest to great concern for the presentation of the coinage and how the coinsmight represent the community. It is in this sense that Moses Finley voiced his oftrepeated dictum that Greek coins were no more than a political phenomenon,that is they served simply as a form of self-representation and civic pride, muchlike, for example, monumental architecture.11Although not all scholars have beenas game as Finley to place all of Greek coinage under this rubric, they are seducedon occasion by the idea of prestige issues, coins produced solely with the intentto use numismatic art or monetary value to enhance the political power of the is-suer either at home or abroad.12Civic pride as a motivation for production ndssupport in a second century BCE decree from Sestos (OGIS339), listing both prideand prot as reasons for the introduction of a new series of bronze coins, but herepride is more likely an expression of political autonomy than prestige.13

Because so much of Greek history is a tale of civic destruction and hegemonictakeover, and because the production of coinage has been seen as intimately linkedto the political identity of a community, it has generally been assumed that produc-tion of coinage must cease with defeat. Once a polis rebuilt itself, or regained its au-tonomy, its natural right of coinage would be asserted in revived coin production.These assumptions have long been used to date Greek coinage, providing the rather

precise dates of production for many series found in the literature. The dust has yetto settle from Thomas Martins14forceful challenge of these assumptions; althoughMartin was able to demonstrate cases of continued coin production after an exter-nal political takeover in the classical period, detractors have marshaled evidence,mostly from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, which complicate Martins conclu-sions.15Political change generated from within is also used to date coinage on theassumption that different governments, or types of government, would desire new

coins, or would wish to celebrate political change with a commemorative issue.

16

11M. FINLEY, The ancient economy, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1985, pp. 5354, 16667. For a recent at-tempt to interpret Athenian coinage as little more than a political phenomenon see J. TREVETT, Coinage anddemocracy at Athens, [in:] A. MEADOWS, K. SHIPTON (eds.),Money and its uses in the ancient Greek world,Oxford 2001, pp. 2334.

12Notions of pride or prestige often appear in discussions of Sicilian coinage, e.g., C. KRAAY,Archaic andClassical Greek Coins. Berkeley 1976, p. 209; P. VARGYAS, Darius I and the daric reconsidered, IA35, 2000,pp. 3346 argues that the Persian daric was a prestige issue.

13This decree has rightly received a lot of attention. For important recent discussions see LE RIDER,La nais-

sance de la monnaie..., pp. 24143 and A. MEADOWS, Money, freedom, and empire in the Hellenistic world,[in:] A. MEADOWS, K. SHIPTON (eds.),Money and its uses in the ancient Greek world, Oxford 2001, p. 61.14T. MARTIN, Sovereignty and coinage in classical Greece. Princeton 1985.15See, for example, C.J. HOWGEGO,Ancient History from Coins, London 1995, pp. 4042; MEADOWS,

Money, freedom...; LE RIDER,La naissance de la monnaie..., pp. 24143.16The Athenian owl coinage, for example, which was introduced around the time of the Kleisthenic refoms,

is often caught up in these types of arguments. Some, like M. PRICE, N. WAGGONER,Archaic Greek Coin-


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Leslie Kurke17and Sitta von Reden18have studied the role of coinage in theinternal power struggles of the archaic period, the former as a locus of conict

between elites and non-elites, and the latter as a key component in the developingmoral economy of the polis. Both stress the symbolic aspects of coinage quacoinage and its close identity with specic political forces. On a different tack,Papadopoulos19considers the role of coin iconography in minting identity, as anactive agent in shaping political and communal identity in the archaic Greek west.The theme of using coinage (qua coinage) to generate political cohesiveness alsoappears in von Redens20latest book, wherein she argues that aggressive Ptolemaicmonetization via coinage (as opposed to bullion) served to achieve greater politicalconsolidation in Egypt.

This brief, and by no means comprehensive survey illustrates some of the re-current themes in the political interpretation of Greek coinage, including the effec-tive veiling of monetary function, the insistence on a right of coinage, and the useof coinage as a means a tool and club to achieve desired political ends. Argu-ments that appear to follow these themes to extremes, favoring political interpreta-tions too resolutely, or without afrming the monetary functions of coinage, havemet with considerable backlash.21In building his case against the presumed link

between political autonomy and coin production, for example, Martin 22deniedalmost all political and symbolic motivations for Greek coinage, instead heavilyunderscoring the many economic motivations a polis would have for producingcoins, including the nancing of public works, the payment of salaries and doles,and prot. Indeed, the most frequently argued economic motivation for the pro-duction of Greek coinage is prot, the notion that ancient states, like their modern

age: the Asyut hoard. London 1975, pp. 6466, see the coinage as a product, and therefore, a symbol of the newdemocracy. Others (e.g., J.H. KROLL, From Wappenmnzen to Gorgoneia to Owls, ANSMusN26, 1981, pp.132 have argued that the owls were introduced under the tyrants.

17L. KURKE, Coins, bodies, games and gold: the politics of meaning in Archaic Greece. Princeton 1999.18S. VON REDEN, Exchange in ancient Greece, London 1995; EADEM, Money, Law and Exchange:

Coinage in the Greek Polis,JHS 117, 1997, pp. 15476.19 J.K. PAPADOPOULOS, Minting identity: coinage, ideology and the economics of colonization in

Akhaina Magna Graecia, CAJ12, 2002, pp. 215.20S. VON REDEN,Money in Ptolemaic Egypt from the Macedonian conquest to the end of the third cen-

tury BC, Cambridge 2008.21See, for example,J.H. KROLL, Review of S. von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece,AJA101, 1997,

pp. 175176; IDEM, Review of Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: the Politics of Meaning in

Archaic Greece, CJ96, 2000, pp. 8590 and F. DE CALLATA, Sur les origines de la monnaie stricto sensu(nomisma). propos de deux livres rcents (S. von Reden et L. Kurke) ,RN157, 2000, pp. 8393 reviews ofKurke and von Reden. Cf. R. SEAFORD, Reading money: Leslie Kurke on the politics of meaning in ArchaicGreece,Arion9.3, 2002, pp. 145165. E. MACKIL, P. VAN ALFEN, Cooperative coinage, [in:] P.G. VANALFEN (ed.) Agoranomia: studies in money and exchange presented to John H. Kroll, New York 2006, pp.201246. take issue with the political interpretation of alliance or league coinages.

22MARTIN, Sovereignty and Coinage in Classical Greece.


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counterparts, could generate (substantial) income from the production of coinagethrough duciary and market mechanisms. In this vein, George Le Rider23has sug-gested that this was the primary motivation for the earliest electrum coins: the abil-ity to enforce an overvaluation of 1520% made minting coins a highly lucrativeactivity for the state. Even a lesser mark up, the normal 35% rate on silver coins,could generate sizeable prots for coinages in great demand.24

Despite the polarization that sometimes occurs between the political and eco-nomic systems of interpretation, the two are by no means exclusive. A numberof studies, those focusing on the Hellenistic world especially, have shown how

political and economic motivations become entwined, or at least how, in certaincases, one cannot be considered without the other.25The quality of textual sourcesand the changing nature of the political and economic landscape, not to mentionthe changing nature of coinage itself, make the melding of the two systems ofinterpretation obvious, and desirable for the Hellenistic period. For the archaic

period we need to ask: where are the limits of each system, where are the pointsof intersection, or, more boldly, do the two systems even ask the right questions?We cannot be so sure.

CURRENT METHODOLOGIES: (NON-) NUMISMATICThere have been in recent years several studies demonstrating the signi-

cant cultural, social, and to a lesser degree economic impact of the introductionof coinage in the Greek world.26Written in the main by literary critics and socialhistorians with little background in numismatics, these studies have highlightedhow money (not always clearly distinguished from coinage) was implicated in the

power contests of the archaic poleis, or in the case of Richard Seafords27study,how early Greek communal practices set the stage for the explosive adoption of

23LE RIDER,La naissance de la monnaie....24P.G. VAN ALFEN, Hatching owls: the regulation of coin production in later fth-century Athens, [in:]

F. DE CALLATA, E. LO CASCIO (eds.), Quantifying monetary supplies in Greco-Roman times. (Pragmateiai,no. 19), Bari 2010, pp. 147 provides a discussion of the evidence in the case of Athens. G. BRANSBOURG,Fides et pecunia numerata: chartalism and metallism in the Roman world. Part 1: The Republic,AJN23, 2011,pp. 91, 103, however, questions how protable minting silver coinages might actually have been, particularly forlow volume production.

25E.g. F. DE CALLATA,Lhistoire des guerres mithridatiques vue par les monnaies. Louvain-la-neuve1997; MEADOWS, Money, freedom...; G. OLIVER, The politics of coinage: Athens and Antigonus Gona-tas, [in:] A. MEADOWS, K. SHIPTON (eds.),Money and its uses in the ancient Greek world, Oxford 2001, pp.

3552; VON REDEN,Money in Ptolemaic Egypt...; C. HOWGEGO, Why did ancient states strike coins?,NC150, 1990, pp. 125 seminal overview of the reasons why ancient states struck coins also provides a conspectusof political and economic motivations from the archaic through Roman periods.

26Notably L. KURKE, Coins, bodies, games and gold: the politics of meaning in Archaic Greece,Princeton1999; VON REDEN,Exchange in ancient Greece; SCHAPS, The invention of coinage...; SEAFORD,Money andthe early Greek mind....

27SEAFORD,Money and the early Greek mind....


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coinage throughout the Aegean and in the Greek west. The methodology, in themain, is inductive, framing problems within anthropological or literary theories inorder to approach the material evidence of coinage through the literary represen-tation of coinage. When successful, these studies have been able to map archaicGreek mentalities coming to terms with the social, political, and economic aspectsof money generally, rather than with the decisions of individual poleis regard-ing the production of specic series of coins. This has led in some cases to grossgeneralizations derived from the treatment of money/coinage as an abstraction,or to the inadvertent oversight of numismatic particulars that negate or seriouslyundermine conclusions. Leslie Kurke (1999),28for example, maintains that in theconict between elitist and middling traditions over the civic appropriation ofthe long-term transaction order, there was tremendous elite hostility to coinage.This claim, however, is difcult to support since it was the elites who were respon-sible for producing coins in many poleis;29archaic Syracuse and Athens stand outas obvious examples.

Greek numismatic studies, on the other hand, have traditionally been deduc-tive, or simply descriptive. They often focus intensely on single mints, such as Syr-acuse, and follow an established procedure: for comparatively smaller mints, i.e.,those that did not produce a truly massive quantity of coins, die studies providea relative chronology of the various series and the statistical basis for determiningthe quantity of coins produced, plus technical information on weight standardsand die axis preferences. For larger mints, like Athens, a researcher might producea typology, illustrating all known types and attempts to establish a relative chro-nology.30In both cases, once the relative chronology has been worked out it is setagainst the political history of the polis derived primarily from textual sources.As noted before, known political events, such as wars, changes in constitutions

or hegemonic takeovers, are thought to be reected in the coins, and thereforethese events are used as anchor points for turning the relative chronology into anabsolute chronology, thus producing a story of the mint that is neatly linear andmainly political. Because there is still so much basic work to be done in Greek nu-mismatics (e.g., die studies, attributions), synthetic treatments, like those of Thom-

28KURKE, Coins, bodies, games and gold....29 As noted by KROLL, Review of S. von Reden...; IDEM, Review of Leslie Kurke... and DE

CALLATA, Sur les origines de la monnaie... and SEAFORD, Reading money... in their reviews of Kurkeand von Reden.30The most ambitious die study of an ancient Greek coinage to date is that of W. FISCHER-BOSSERT,

Chronologie der Didrachmenprgung von Tarent, 510280 v. Chr. BerlinNew York 1999, who studied roughly8,000 didrachms of Tarentum. C. FLAMENT. Le monnayage en argent dAthnes: de lpoque archaque lpoque hellnistique (c. 550c. 40 av. J.-C.), Louvain-la-Neuve 2007 has recently offered a typology of Athe-nian silver coinage in lieu of a die study.


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as Martin,31George Le Rider,32Ritter,33 and Le Rider and Franois de Callata(2006),34which focus on particular problems or eras, rather than individual mints,are rare. Rare too is the use of theoretical approaches that lie beyond the realmsneo-classical economics and positivist classical studies.

Because of the short comings in both methodologies, there is clear need formiddle range approaches that integrate the wealth of empirical evidence, i.e.,the highly detailed numismatic studies, with appropriate theoretical approaches.In the eld of Roman numismatics this has already begun, partly because the ico-nography of Roman-period coins is more explicitly political than Greek coinage,thus easing theoretical studies of Bildsprache (picture language),35 partly be-cause the sheer abundance of coinage makes die studies for some series all butimpossible, thus necessitating different approaches, and partly because the largenumber of Roman coins found in excavations throughout Europe has encouragedthe study of this coinage through the lens of post-processual archaeological theory.This is most readily apparent in the recent Coins in Contextvolume, which aimsat the deliberate use of social and archaeological theory to frame questions regard-ing coins found in archaeological contexts.36While this volume is important fordemonstrating how coins and theory can be integrated, it is centered on deposi-tional (and post-depositional) problems, i.e., the distribution and consumption ofthe object, rather than with production. Coins out of context might better describethe situation with Greek numismatics, not only because information regarding thendspot of a coin is often long lost by the time the coin becomes known, but also

because archaeological context, when it is known, generally has little to say aboutthe political and economic factors of production; here the coins must speak forthemselves. Distribution is also a concern of Greek numismatics, but from the eco-nomic perspective of (state) payout rather than that of, for example, a non-Greek

receiving an Athenian tetradrachm and how he might view this coin and monetary

31MARTIN, Sovereignty and coinage in classical Greece.32LE RIDER,La naissance de la monnaie...; IDEM,Alexandre le Grand: monnaie, fnances et politique,

Paris 2003 (English edition 2008).33S. RITTER,Bildkontakte: Gtter und Heroen in der Bildsprache griechischer Mnzen des 4. Jahrhun-

derts v. Chr, Berlin 2002.34G. LE RIDER, F. DE CALLATA,Les Sleucides et les Ptolmes : Lhritage montaire et fnancier

dAlexandre le grand, Monaco 2006.35RITTER,Bildkontakte...lookat Bildsprache in fourth century Greek coinage, while an admirable attempt,

stays rmly within the traditional numismatic interpretative mode without venturing into, for example, art histori-cal theories of iconography and symbolism.36The papers in C. HOWGEGO, V. HEUCHERT, A. BRUNETT (eds.), Coinage and identity in the Roman

provinces, Oxford 2005 deal with the problems of identity and coinage in the Roman provinces with theoreticalsophistication, for example, but not at the same level of theoretical awareness found in H.-M. VON KAENEL, F.KEMMERS (eds.), Coins in Context I: New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin Finds, Studien zu Fund-mnzen der Antike 23, Mainz 2009.


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transactions differently than his Athenian counterpart. Since my concern is delin-eating what we might call the Realpolitik of archaic coinage, that is the politicaland economic bargaining over the practical and material considerations of coin

production, and not so much with a coins reception and continued use, post-pro-cessual theories are of less use than those that can address the many communal (orindividual) decisions that must be made in order to mint in the rst place: why dowe need coinage; how much should we produce; where do we procure monetarymetal and what kind; what weight standard and denominational system do we use;what should appear on the coins? But, perhaps most importantly, who decides?

QUESTIONS AND FRAMEWORKSI suggest that many of the political and economic interpretations of coinage

discussed above do not go far enough in their conceptual framework to be able toaddress these types of questions. In part this is because recourse to the state asthe monolithic decider in these matters depersonalizes the very real discussionsand decision processes behind the production of the objects we now hold in ourhands.37How then to proceed? We can begin by reminding ourselves that in thesecomparatively small communities, with their constant schedules of symposia,military obligations and religious festivals, those who were eligible to inuencedecisions about coin production came to know each other, or know about eachother quite well; the state was their friends, neighbors, and personal enemies.Thinking of coin production as a communal project, one comprised of individuals

possessing different types of knowledge, power, and loyalties attempting to workin concert with each other, we recognize that in the process of negotiating an out-come, pure motivations like the political or economic become blurred in the clashof competing self-interests and aims, as we saw in the case of the US Lincoln cent.

We also recognize that because of this the outcome, i.e., the coins, may not reectthe best policies or the most efcient solutions. Whatever complexities were expe-rienced in these negotiations at the domestic level, they were exacerbated when thetalking moved across political boundaries, as in the case of cooperative coinages.

Within the elds of economics, politics, and sociology there are tools that canhelp us model how these decisions were made. My suggested theoretical frame-work is pluralistic, adopting components of public choice theory to explore ratio-nality and the behavior of self-interested political actors and agents; bargaining

theory to understand sources of inefciencies in reaching agreements; elite theory

37 In P.G. VAN ALFEN, Public benefactor or proteer? The role of the state and early electrum coin-age, [in:] H. GITLER, K. KONUK, C. LOBER (eds.), White Gold, (forthcoming), I deal more at length with theanalytical tendency to depersonalize the decision making processes within state institutions and focus only oninstitutional inputs and outputs.


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to understand power distributions; network theory to trace the organization of in-formation and loyalties; and theories of political and economic institutions to ap-

preciate how actors and agents shape institutions and are shaped by them.38Sucha framework would allow for sustained work on the basic questions facing coin

producers: e.g., why do we need coinage; how much should we produce; wheredo we procure monetary metal and what kind; what weight standard and denomi-national system do we use; what should appear on the coins? But the frameworkwill also demand greater nuance: for example, how did governing structures affectoutcomes; how did the actors implement and enforce their decisions; how efcientwas the outcome?

A methodology that integrates detailed numismatic study within frameworksderived from economic sociology and political theory would offer a rich analysisof archaic coinage. In the remainder of this section, I review a number of particular

problems in archaic coinage that might benet from this approach.We are aware of differing regime typestyrannies, oligarchies, democracies

in many of the archaic poleis that produced coins, yet beyond stereotypes (e.g.,tyrants are self-serving elites so of course grace their coins with chariot scenes)there is little discussion of how the structure or culture of each regime type mightaffect decisions to coin. Although we lack direct evidence in all these cases, wecan infer that there were different institutional structures within each regime thatwould have a bearing on the decision processes. Democratic institutions like theAthenian Boule and Ekklesia, for example, would, because of their scale, presenta different set of collective action problems when compared to the tyrant and hisgroup of advisors, or a restricted group of oligarchs. Similarly, because democraticgoverning culture is different from that of tyrannies, we might expect democraticdecision makers, among other things, to perceive coins as a public good, to be

produced in large quantity, in a large range of denominations, bearing generally in-offensive designs. Conversely, oligarchs might regard coinage as a club good, de-signed to appeal to and circulate among elite peers.39These expectations are worth

38The literature on collective action theory, bargaining theory, and network theory, as well as related theo-ries like rational choice, is vast. Key texts include: collective action: M. OLSON, The Logic of Collective Action:Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge 1965; D.C. MUELLER,Public choice III, Cambridge 2003;bargaining theory: G. DORON, I. SENED, Political bargaining: theory, practice and process, London 2001;network theory: M. GRANOVETTER, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,

American Journal of Sociology91.3, 1985, pp. 48193; W.W. POWELL, Neither market nor hierarchy: networkforms of organization,Research in Organizational Behavior12, 1990, pp. 295336. J. OBER,Democracy andknowledge: innovation and learning in classical Athens, Princeton 2008 is an excellent example of how many ofthese theoretical approaches can be productively applied to the study of ancient Greek politics.

39Public goods are those that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, like national defense; club goods, onthe other hand, are those that are non-rivalrous, but excludable, like private parks. See MUELLER,Public choiceIII, pp. 1113.


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closer examination, in order to see how each group arrives at such conclusions,and whether we can detect and compare institutional differences and cultures inthe numismatic record. We also need to be aware, again as the story of the Lincolncent reminds us, that individual elites can have outsized effects on outcomes, evenin democracies.

Archaic elites were often members of traditional aristocratic families, who bytheir wealth and prestige lay claim to power; they might also have been middlingindividuals who held key positions in civic institutions. In either case, the powerthey held could be disproportionate, inciting them to act in ways that introducedadditional complications in bargaining over coin production. Individual elites act-ing out may have left their mark in the numismatic record. For example, RobertWallace40has conrmed the reading of the inscription WALWET (Alyattes) onearly some early Lydian electrum coins (PLATE I. 13), as well as KUKALIM(PLATE I. 14), whom he identies as a royal personage, and [.]LATE[.]-, whoneed not be a royal person, but who may have struck his coins at a branch mint.Wallace assumes, as most would viewing these issues from the perspective of post-archaic practice, that permission to mint would have to be sought from the headof state, i.e., Alyattes, who presumably owned the right to coin. But need we as-sume this was the case? Might KUKALIM and [.]LATE[.]have simply produced

parallel issues on their own authority, no less than the otherwise unknown Phanesof Ephesus appears to have done with his series of signed issues (PLATE I. 15)?41

The iconography of other archaic coins might also reect dispersed ratherthan centralized authority. There are hundreds of archaic electrum and silver coinsin public and private collections that remain catalogued under uncertain attri-

butions.42Some designs are rudimentary, nothing more than geometric patterns orstriations, while others are so common, e.g., lions, panthers, bulls, etc., that they

fail to signal, from our wider (pan-Hellenic) perspective at least, any individualityassociated with separate civic mints. Within the context of a narrower network ofusers, each of these designs may have served the function of identifying the is-

40R. WALLACE, KUKALIM, WALWET, and the Artemision deposit, [in:] P.G. VAN ALFEN (ed.),Agoranomia: studies in money and exchange presented to John H. Kroll, New York 2006, pp. 3748.

41J.H. KROLL, Dont forget the dynastai, [in:] H. GITLER, K. KONUK, C. LORBER, White Gold,forthcoming, discusses archaic elite dynastai in Asia Minor who might also have coined. For the Phanes coinagesee F. REBUFFAT, Phanes: questions sans responses , [in:] O. CASABONNE (ed.), Mecahnismes et innova-tions monetaires dans lAnatolie achemenide. Numismatique et histoire. Actes de la Table Ronde Internationale

dIstanbul, 2223 mai 1997, Paris 2002, pp. 225233 and K. KONUK, Asia Minor to the Ionian Revolt, [in:]W.E. METCALF (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage, Oxford 2012, p.47).42 I have identied roughly 250 discrete series of unattributed early electrum coins. But since we lack

a complete corpus of early electrum coinage, verifying the accuracy of this count at the moment poses difculties.Nevertheless, I believe it would be safe to say that for early electrum there are certainly more than 100 unattrib-uted series, and probably more than 200. For unattributed archaic silver issues from Asia Minor see SNG Kayhanand the Jonathan Rosen collection published by the ANS in 1983.


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suer, but this information would be easily lost as the coins migrated away from thegroup, or would be irretrievable in a sea of similarly designed coins. Regardless ofthe signicance of the signed Lydian and Ephesian issues noted above, the uncer-tain types indicate either that a smaller number of monopoly holders did not careto brand their products in distinctive ways, thus undermining their control, orthat there were a larger number of unregulated producers. Either case raises seriousquestions about coining and centralized control at this time, and who was makingcoining decisions. It also forces us to ask whether monopolies over coinage were

born at the same moment as the rst coins.43Saying no, and positing instead a movement from dispersed to centralized

authority would seriously disrupt several models for the development of archaiccoinage and monetization,44which depend on the notion of a centralized authorityaggressively enforcing duciarity. But it may help to explain both the develop-ment of the widespread trust necessary to make coinage function as a monetaryinstrument, and the hundreds of uncertain issues. If, for example, we imaginethe social networks accruing around individual elites, including peers and cli-ents, as well as the interrelationships between all the networks within the largercommunity, we can see how the ties within and between the networks provide areadymade bed in which monetary trust could grow.45We can further imagine in-dividual elites, who would have the resources and need to produce coins, present-ing them to their followers or peers in order to fulll social and other obligations,including liturgy-like obligations, without the expectation that the coins would

be accepted as coins beyond the immediate circle of trust. Larger patterns of cir-culation could develop as individuals with close ties to other networks passedthe coins on vouching for their value.46This operation would be analogous toother forms of private money, like tokens and scrip, that go viral, not so much

because the issuing authority is recognized across the community, but because ofthe degree of trust between the parties to the transaction and the fact that the coinor bill serves a real monetary need.47

43In VAN ALFEN, Public benefactor or proteer?..., I study the problem of early coin monopolization.44 e.g. LE RIDER,La naissance de la monnaie...; R. WALLACE, The origin of electrum coinage,AJA

91, 1987, pp. 385397.45M.J. Price, Thoughts on the beginning of coinage, [in:] C.N.L. BROOKE et al. (eds.), Studies in

numismatic method presented to Philip Grierson, Cambridge 1983, pp. 110, posited the development of early

electrum coinage within smaller groups of elites and their dependents. For trust networks see C. TILLY, Trust andRule, Cambridge 2005.46The notion of coinage originated with individual elites is not new; I add the idea of networks facilitating

the spread of coinage.47G. SELGIN, Good money: Birmingham button makers, the Royal Mint, and the beginnings of modern

coinage, 17751821, Ann Arbor 2008 describes similar operations with privately produced token coinages inlate-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century England.


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If the initial production and use of coinage lay within smaller social networks,a (gradual?) change took place whereby those in political power began to make de-cisions restricting others abilities to produce coinage. By c. 500 BCE every coin-

producing polis, as far as we can tell, had adopted similar restrictive policies, someperhaps learning from the example of others, or perhaps acting in competition withothers. How and why this all took place is a complex problem, and may be a func-tion of many other changes occurring in the poleis, including the development of

public treasuries and new methods of taxation, the development of new types ofpublic expenditure (e.g., festivals, navies, monumental architecture), the develop-ment law codes and an acute sense of citizenship, the expansion of market activity,and so forth. Even so, it is not immediately clear why those in power would iden-tify a need to monopolize coin production, rather than simply adding their coinageto the existing mix, or how much force they would need to reset preexisting mon-etary practices. Economic motivation, especially the prot motive, ranks high asa probable answer, but this response can seem crude. It is not difcult to imagine,for example, a stereotypical tyrant and his cronies deciding to impose a restrictivesystem that would aid in lling their entertainment coffers at the expense of thesubjects, but whether this would also keep the peace and aid their political longev-ity is questionable. Again, we might frame this problem with greater subtlety.

If generating scal revenue and maintaining political support were primarymotivations, achieving the compliance of the community at large was necessary,and this might be done by nding ways to work together to shift some of the scal

burden outside of the community, or at least away from those voicing the loudestopposition.48Aligning interests to that goal would also require the support of any

private producers, who would be forfeiting their independent ability to coin. But,by working to recalibrate indigenous coinage from a collection of club goods to

a single public good, the community could take advantage of addition benets ofcoin use it was not able to previously: for example, the creation of a closed monetaryzone with a single currency would force those coming into the zone to exchange orre-mint their foreign coins for a fee; the creation of a successful trade or export coin-age could also generate revenue through demand driven pricing or exchange fees.By positing a process of internal coordination and alignment that projects somefunctions of coinage to the edge of the community or beyond, we can also see howcoinage might become more closely associated with the identity of a community,

and how the success of the endeavor would encourage the continued monopoliza-tion of coin production, both at home, and as an example for neighbors to follow.

48For further discussion of the tensions that might arise between the need for political stability and revenuegeneration in archaic coin production see VAN ALFEN, Public benefactor or proteer?....

PETER VAN ALFEN


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But even as monopolies were being established and coinages becoming morermly tied to civic identities, policy makers were still faced with the problem ofhow best to pursue their ends with the means available. A number of series ofarchaic coinages indicate that the limits of monopolistic power and identity werecontinuously being tested, for example:

1) Around 500 BCE, an unknown number of Lesbian poleis were involvedin the production of a large series of billon coins meant strictly for circulationin Lesbos and its mainland territory (PLATE I. 16). At the same time Methymna

produced a civic silver issue (PLATE I. 17), while Mytilene was involved in theproduction of yet a third coinage, a joint electrum issue with Phokaia, 80 km to thesouth (PLATE I. 18).49Both the silver and the electrum circulated widely beyondLesbos. If the Mytileneans were involved in the production of the billon issues,their monetary activity simultaneously involved the minting of two mutually ex-clusive types of coinage, both of which required close formal coordination withother communities.

2) Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos and Aegean thalassocrat, oversaw the pro-duction of a ying boar silver series c. 525 BC; Klazomenai, and Ialysos also

produced ying boar coinages (PLATE I. 1921).50 The harmony of iconogra-phy, although not unusual for the archaic period, is suggestive in this case sincePolykrates ruled for a while over neighboring islands, including Rhodes. Disso-nance in the weight standards, however, means that the three coinages were notinterchangeable. Presuming there was a formal arrangement, or hegemonic direc-tive, linking all three coinages to a common cause (supporting the tyrants navy?),the outcome was not efcient, indicating serious problems in coordination or en-forcement.

3) Eretria and Chalcis on Euboia both begin minting at about the same time;

both closely followed (or vice versa?) coin developments across the channel inAthens. By c. 525 BCE all three communities were producing coins on the sameweight standard with identical fabrics; Euboean colonies in the Chalcidice fol-lowed suit, adopting in one case (Dikaiai) the types of Eretria (PLATE I. 2224).51The creation of a Euboean-Attic monetary zone, if it was not ofcially formalized,

49See MACKIL, P. VAN ALFEN, Cooperative coinage for a discussion of the political economy ofthis Mytilene-Phokaia cooperative coinage. For the coinage itself see F. BODENSTEDT, Die Elektronmnzenvon Phokaia und Mytilene,Tbingen 1981. For an overview of the billon and Methymnian silver coinages see

O. HOOVER, The Handbook of Greek Coinage Series, volume 6 : handbook of coins of the islands: Adriatic,Iionian, Thracian, Aegean, and Carpathian seas (excluding Crete and Cyprus), sixth to frst centuries BC, Lan-caster 2010.

50For the ying boar coinages see J.P. BARRON, The silver coins of Samos, London 1966; KRAAY,Archaic and Classical Greek Coins; and E. ISIK, Frhe Silberprgungen in Stadten Westkleinasiens. Saar-brucken 2003.

51See KRAAY,Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, for the issues of Euboia and Dikaia.



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is suggestive of hyper-vigilance of neighboring activity and economic insecurityushered along interstate personal networks. From the regional perspective, domes-tic coining decisions resulted in a series of interlocking informal institutions ratherthan a single centralized and formalized institution. The outcome was effectivelythe same an efcient regional system but one that developed from competitive-ness rather than cooperation.

Together these examples offer contrasting views of voluntary and involun-tary action, of formal and informal institutional development, of internally- andexternally-oriented monetary policies, and of the (dis)association of coinage andcivic identity.

CONCLUSIONS

The need for new methodologies and frameworks in the study of archaicGreek coinage should by now be apparent. By shifting focus to the dense decision

processes that initiated and administered the production (rather than distributionand consumption) of early coinage, we may gain greater insight into not only howearly coinages came about, but why they did. I argue that current approaches inthe study of archaic coinage do not go far enough to shed light on these processes:they tend towards polarized systems of interpretation, generally positing eithereconomic orpolitical motivations; and they employ methodologies that are eitherheavily descriptive but theoretically under-informed, or are theoretically astute butweak on the numismatic evidence. I suggest a signicantly different, syntheticapproach: close study of the coinage (bottom up) and appropriate theoretical appli-cations (top down) to help frame and model the decision processes. More speci-cally, I suggest integrating technical numismatic die studies with recent theoreticalframeworks developed in the elds of political science, sociology, and economics.

Contact the author at: [email protected]

Acknowledgements:An earlier version of this paper was presented at a 2009 conference on eco-

nomic history hosted by Montana State University and organized by Josiah Oberand Billy Smith. I thank the organizers and participants for their comments. Ad-

ditionally, I thank the 2010, 2011 and 2012 ANS summer seminar students fortheir criticisms. I am, as always, grateful to Muserref Yetim for her inspirationand insights on all things political and economic. Any short comings here are, ofcourse, mine alone.

PETER VAN ALFEN


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PROBLEMY EKONOMII POLITYCZNEJ ARCHAICZNEGO MENNICTWA GRECKIEGO

STRESZCZENIE

Problemy ekonomii politycznejarchaicznego mennictwa greckiego

W niniejszym artykule autor poddaje analizie sabe strony obecnie stosowanejmetodologii bada nad archaicznym mennictwem greckim. Wskazujc brak me-todologii i procedur warsztatowych, umoliwiajcych koncentracj bada na pro-cesie decyzyjnym, ktry inicjowa i zarzdza produkcj (a nie dystrybucj i kon-

sumpcj) wczesnego mennictwa, autor sugeruje znaczco odmienne, syntetycznepodejcie. Staranne studium mennictwa, wywodzce si z tradycyjnej numizma-tycznej metodologii, jak badania powiza stempli, oraz odpowiednie zaoeniateoretyczne wywodzce si z nauk politycznych i ekonomii instytucjonalnej, moe

pomc w zarysowaniu granic i odtworzeniu tych procesw decyzyjnych.


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PETER VAN ALFEN

PLATE 1 Fig. 1. Ionia, Miletus, 575 BC, EL stater, 14.03 g. ANS 1957.138.1.Fig. 2. United States, 1909 CU cent. ANS 0000.999.4585.Fig. 3. United States, 1909 AR 10 cent, ANS 0000.999.4897.Fig. 4. United States, 1907 AV 20 dollar. ANS 1980.109.2328, Arthur J. Fecht estate.

Fig. 5. United States, 1907 AV 10 dollar. ANS 1908.93.48, John Pierpont Morgan. Fig. 6. United States, 1908 AV 5 dollar. ANS 1908.14.2, gift of R.H. Lawrence.

PLATE 2 Fig. 7. United States, 1980 AV 2.50 dollar. ANS 1908.14.1, gift of R.H. Lawrence.Fig. 8. United States, 1913 NI 5 cent. ANS 1915.999.14.Fig. 9. United States, 1916 AR 10 cent. ANS 1983.156.57, gift of D.J. Fleischer.Fig. 10. United States, 1916 AR 50 cent. ANS 2011.22.1, gift of Paul Kagin.Fig. 11. United States, 1916 AR 25 cent. ANS 1938.94.5, G.F. Kunz estate.Fig. 12. United States, 2009 NI/ZN cent. ANS 2010.14.2.

PLATE 3 Fig. 13. Lydia, WALWET, 575 BC EL trite. 476 g. NAC 59, 4 April 2011, lot 629. Fig. 14. Lydia, KUKALIM, 575 BC, EL trite. 4.72 g. CNG Triton XV, 3 January 2012,lot 1241.

Fig. 15. Ionia, Phanes, 575 BC, EL stater. 14.14 g. Gorny & Mosch 159, 8 October 2007,lot 188.

Fig. 16. Lesbos, 500 BC, BI stater. 14.14g. ANS 1944.100.44272, E.T. Newell bequest.Fig. 17. Lesbos, Methymna, 500 BC, AR didrachm. 8.34 g. ANS 1944.100.44331,

E.T. Newell bequest.

PLATE 4 Fig. 18. Lesbos, Mytilene, 500 BC, EL hekte, 2.58 g. ANS 1955.54.379,Jean B. Cammann estate.

Fig. 19. Ionia, Samos, 520 BC. AR diobol, 1.48 g. ANS 1944.100.47283,E.T. Newell bequest.Fig. 20. Ionia, Klazomenai, 520 BC, AR didrachm, 7.02 g. ANS 1955.54.385,

Jean B. Cammann estate.Fig. 21. Rhodes, Ialysos, 520 BC, AR diobol, 1.35 g. ANS 1944.100.48555,

E.T. Newell bequest.Fig. 22. Attika, Athens, 520 BC, AR tetradrachm, 17.07 g. ANS 1944.100.24115,

E.T. Newell bequest.Fig. 23. Euboia, Chalcis, 520 BC, AR tetradrachm, 17.31 g, ANS 1958.195.1.Fig. 24. Euboia, Eretria, 520 BC, AR didrachm, 8.48 g. ANS 1978.82.2,

gift of W.P. Wallace.


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PLATE 1

5

4

3

2

1

6


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PLATE 2

11

10

9

8

7

12


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PLATE 3

17

16

15

14

13


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PLATE 4

22

21

20

19

18

23

problems in the political economy of archaic greek coinage / peter van alfen

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