From AD 81-192 almost all bronze coinage circulation in the western Empire was minted in Rome. This study examines, in some detail, the distribution by date and by reverse types of the coins. It also looks at changes in the volume of production and at changes in the ratio of the different denominations. The reign of Trajan is pinpointed as the start of the rise of the Sestertius as the main bronze denomination. The supply of currency to each province is examined and differences are identified between civilian and military provinces.
Mercury's Wings: Exploring Modes of Communication in the Ancient World is the first-ever volume of essays devoted to ancient communications. Comparable previous work has been mainly confined to articles on aspects of communication in the Roman empire. This set of 18 essays with an introduction by the co-editors marks a milestone, therefore, that demonstrates the importance and rich further potential of the topic. The authors, who include art historians, Assyriologists, Classicists and Egyptologists, take the broad view of communications as a vehicle not just for the transmission of information, but also for the conduct of religion, commerce, and culture. Encompassed within this scope are varied purposes of communication such as propaganda and celebration, as well as profit and administration. Each essay deals with a communications network, or with a means or type of communication, or with the special features of religious communication or communication in and among large empires. The spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries of the volume take in the Near East as well as Greece and Rome, and cover a period of some 2,000 years beginning in the second millennium BCE and ending with the spread of Christianity during the last centuries of the Roman Empire in the West. In all, about one quarter of the essays deal with the Near East, one quarter with Greece, one quarter with Greece and Rome together, and one quarter with the Roman empire and its Persian and Indian rivals. Some essays concern topics in cultural history, such as Greek music and Roman art; some concern economic history in both Mesopotamia and Rome; and some concern traditional historical topics such as diplomacy and war in the Mediterranean world. Each essay draws on recent work in the theory of communications.
The Roman monetary system was highly complex. It involved official Roman coins in both silver and bronze, which some provinces produced while others imported them from mints in Rome and elsewhere, as well as, in the East, a range of civic coinages. This is a comprehensive study of the workings of the system in the Eastern provinces from the Augustan period to the third century AD, when the Roman Empire suffered a monetary and economic crisis. The Eastern provinces exemplify the full complexity of the system, but comparisons are made with evidence from the Western provinces as well as with appropriate case studies from other historical times and places. The book will be essential for all Roman historians and numismatists and of interest to a broader range of historians of economics and finance.
This themed volume contains 28 papers by leading authorities on numismatics and monetary history. It covers a variety of topics concerning the design, use and circulation of coinage in northern Europe in the late fifth to early thirteenth centuries.
This themed volume contains 28 papers by leading authorities on numismatics and monetary history. It covers a variety of topics concerning the design, use and circulation of coinage in northern Europe in the late fifth to early thirteenth centuries.
Materialising the Roman Empire defines an innovative research agenda for Roman archaeology, highlighting the diverse ways in which the Empire was made materially tangible in the lives of its inhabitants. The volume explores how material culture was integral to the processes of imperialism, both as the Empire grew, and as it fragmented, and in doing so provide up-to-date overviews of major topics in Roman archaeology. Each chapter offers a critical overview of a major field within the archaeology of the Roman Empire. The book’s authors explore the distinctive contribution that archaeology and the study of material culture can make to our understanding of the key institutions and fields of activity in the Roman Empire. The initial chapters address major technologies which, at first glance, appear to be mechanisms of integration across the Roman Empire: roads, writing and coinage. The focus then shifts to analysis of key social structures oriented around material forms and activities found all over the Roman world, such as trade, urbanism, slavery, craft production and frontiers. Finally, the book extends to more abstract dimensions of the Roman world: art, empire, religion and ideology, in which the significant themes remain the dynamics of power and influence. The whole builds towards a broad exploration of the nature of imperial power and the inter-connections that stimulated new community identities and created new social divisions.
This Handbook makes the work of modern German and overwhelmingly German-language scholarship on the archaeology of Roman Germany available in English, presenting the latest developments in current research and providing a truly international perspective on the topic.
In this publication Fleur Kemmers gives an overview of 21st century scholarship on Roman coinage for students and scholars in the fields of ancient history and Roman archaeology. First, it addresses the study of numismatics as a discipline and the theoretical and methodological advances of the last decades. Secondly, it provides guidelines on how to consult numismatic reference works, including those available online. Recent scholarly approaches and insights in the functions of Roman coins as both vehicles of political communication and instruments for state payments are critically assessed. Furthermore, the publication reviews the evidence for a conscious monetary policy on the part of the Roman authorities. Finally, the impact of Roman expansion and imperialism on monetisation and coin use in Rome ́s Empire is discussed.
This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the social and political structures of the late antique period and the ways in which they are manifested in the archaeological and textual record.