CHANGE. The development of the monetary economy of ancient Anatolia, c. 630-30 BC.

Project Information

CHANGE

Grant agreement ID: 865680

DOI

10.3030/865680

EC signature date 14 February 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 981 406,00

EU contribution

€ 1 981 406,00

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CHANGE (CHANGE. The development of the monetary economy of ancient Anatolia, c. 630-30 BC.)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project will describe and analyse the origins and first six centuries of development of coinage within the monetary economy of ancient Anatolia. It will proceed by collecting, for the first time in one place, the evidence for the production and use of coinage, in the form of the coinage itself, the records of its distribution in archaeological contexts, and the documentary attestation of its use in contemporary inscriptions. By adapting old, and adopting new as well as interdisciplinary methods of analysis, it will seek to analyse changes in the nature of production and use of coinage as a monetary medium from c. 630-30 BC, along three key axes:
1. Production: Quantification of the monetary output of all identifiable producers of coinage in gold, silver and bronze
2. Circulation: Geographic spread of production and uptake of coinage as a monetary medium
3. Connectivity: Regionalism and isolationism of the monetary policy of political entities
The project thus clarifies the history of the development of coinage from its invention to the arrival of Roman imperial dominion to the whole of the region. It seeks to chart the overall changes in monetary production and use observable in the evidence of coinage and epigraphic documents across the period. It will focus on key developments including:
1. The origins of the concept of coinage
2. The shift from intrinsic to fiduciary monetary instruments
3. The overlap and interconnectedness of large political spaces (e.g. empires) with smaller ones (e.g. city-states)
4. Regionality and cultural contingency of monetary behaviour
The project will also contribute to major ongoing debates in the field of Greek history in areas of network analysis and connectivity, vitality and change of the polis, and intercultural relations between Greeks and other ethnic groups within Anatolia. It represents a bold attempt to explore one aspect of the history of a specific region over a 600-year period. It also aims to establish a methodology for studying ancient monetary behaviour that will be scalable to cover the whole of the ancient world.


The key deliverables of the project may be divided into three categories.
1. A data infrastructure for the coinage of Anatolia that will be represented in both human and machine-readable formats, following the principles of Linked Open Data. Specifically:
a. A full typology of the relevant coinages on the model of Roman Provincial Coinage (WP1)
b. A full database of hoards and coins from excavation, with their contents described by reference to the typology (WP2)
2. A survey of the published corpus of epigraphic material from Anatolia from 630-30 BC, with a view to the creation of a systematic description of the contexts in which monetary terms are mentioned, and a catalogue of texts for each category (WP3).
3. The exploitation of the data thus created to address major questions regarding the nature of the monetary economy of Anatolia from 630-30 BC (WP 4-6).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Four data sets lie at the core of the CHANGE project

1. A typology of the coinage produced in Asia Minor from the beginning of coinage to the coming of Rome. This has been produced through the Linked Open Data based amalgamation of the existing Corpus Nummorum and Hellenistic Royal Coinages projects with a significantly enhanced version of the IRIS typology, which now contains 6639 coin types. This can be searched online at https://greekcoinage.org/arch/

2. The evidence for the findspots of coinage within Asia Minor produced by archaeological excavation. A dataset amalgamated from published and unpublished excavation reports has now been placed online, containing references to 11055 individual finds. Where possible these are identified by type IDs created in the Typology (1 above). This can be searched online at https://change.csad.ox.ac.uk/sitefinds

3. The evidence for the findspots of coinage within Asia Minor as attested by hoard evidence. Relevant hoards in the published volumes of the Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards and the Coin Hoards periodical. Where possible these are identified by type IDs created in the Typology (1 above). This data is being made available online, and can be searched at http://coinhoards.org.

4. The evidence of the monetary activity in Asia Minor as attested by contemporary documents inscribed on stone. Am ontology of monetary activity has been developed and a resource based on that structure has been made available online at https://change.csad.ox.ac.uk/inscriptions. It contains references to monetary activity in more than 11,000 documents.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The new typology published as the central repository of numismatic data generated by the project marks a step shift forward in the numismatic and monetary history of Asia Minor. In many cases, the typology represents the first attempt ever to provide an overview of the coinage of a place or dynasty. It is now possible to search in one place for any producing authority, or to search regionally. Searches may be made by person, place, region, material, date, and by description. The latter element opens a whole new field of iconographic research. Further and deeper functionality will be added in the course of the coming year with findspot information, and the expansion of specimens linked to in the collections of the Staatliche Münzkabinett in Berlin and the British Museum in London.

A number of articles have already emerged, and are in press, devoted to the clarification of the nature of certain coinages, and explaining their treatment within the typology:

A.R. Meadows, ‘The Double-axe Mint. The coinage of Tenedos in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC’ in A. Meadows and U. Wartenberg (eds), Presbeus. Studies in Ancient Coinage Presented to Richard Ashton (New York, 2021), pp. 103-52
A.R. Meadows, ‘The Land that Time Forgot: The Coinage of the Kamoenoi’, Numismatic Chronicle 181 (2021), pp. 93-102
A.R. Meadows, ‘The Coinage of Aegae in Aeolis’, in a forthcoming Festschrift
A.R. Meadows, ‘Neapolis, Isinda and Kolbasa in Pisidia. A co-operative coinage?’, in in a forthcoming Festschrift.

The structured data pertaining to hoard evidence has already allowed for similar clarification, as well as two test studies to be written and accepted for publication:

A.R. Meadows, ‘Small-ish change in Asia Minor: the impact of Alexander's drachm coinage’, in A. Kottaridi (ed.), Beyond Macedonia: the multifaceted Hellenistic Oikoumene reconsidered. Proccedings of the Conference held at Aigai, 27th May – 2nd June 2022 (forthcoming)

L. Lazar, ‘‘The Lechaena Hoard, 1979 (CH 8.417 and 8.358?)’. Numismatic Chronicle (forthcoming 2023).

L. Lazar, ‘‘Hoards in Ancient Anatolia c. 630-30 BC. A Statistical Overview’ in Proceedings of XVI Numismatic Congress, Warsaw 2022 (forthcoming).

Map of mints in Asia Minor, c. 650-30 BC

Silver stater of Aphrodisias in Cilicia, c. 380-350 BC. https://greekcoinage.org/iris/id/aphrodisias