Panel 5.11 – Politics of value: new approaches to early money and the state

Organiser/Chair:

• Elon Heymans (Tel Aviv University)
• Marleen Termeer (Leiden University)

External Discussant:

• Nicola Terrenato (University of Michigan)

Speakers:

• Elon Heymans (Tel Aviv University) / Marleen Termeer (Leiden University)
  Introduction: Rethinking early money and the state
• David Wigg-Wolf (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)
  The adoption of money by non-state societies: the example of Iron-Age northern Europe
• Andreas Murgan
  Between lumps and coins – Italy in the first millennium BC
• Nicholas Borek (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)
  More than Just Coins: A Metrological Approach to Studying Coin Hoards from the Western Mediterranean c.550-470 BCE
• Merav Haklai (Ben-Gurion University, Israel)
  How money defined the Romans

As one of the most enduring icons of economic life, money has been a common feature and central focus in complex societies from antiquity to the present. Arguably, it gained weight as a key feature of Mediterranean economies in the course of the first millennium BCE, mostly in the form of coinage. But money is more than just coin, and its significance more pervasive than just to the strict sphere of what is usually known as "the economy". This session explores how a more inclusive understanding of early money sheds new light on both ancient economies and the relation between money and the state.

Money was sanctioned for use and its value was constructed through exchanges and payments in a range of specific contexts, such as religion and cultic institutions, cultural and colonial interactions, elite strategies, military or economic expansion, and in the articulation of political messages. The use of money (whether metal bullion, coin, or other 'money-stuff') was part of political and social strategies, being subject to what has been termed 'the politics of value' (Appadurai 1986).

Against this background, money has been regarded one of the more prominent means for political entities – states – to assert themselves, i.e. by controlling the issue of coinage and exploiting them as media for political messages. It is therefore hardly surprising that money and its rise to prominence in the embedded economies of the ancient Mediterranean have been predominantly associated with the state, in theoretical opposition to the market (Hart 1986). We wish to subject this assumed relation between the spread of early forms of money and the state to debate.

For this session, we are interested in critical perspectives on the relation between money and the state, including the issue and spread of money by individual actors or social groups. Examples could range from money-stuff regulated or appropriated by the state, to coinages unrelated to state authority. Our focus is not on coinage as a material category within a specialized discourse, but on early money in its wider social settings and the question what it can tell us about the organization of communities. We welcome contributions that focus on these issues in any part of the Mediterranean and/or neighbouring regions, from the Bronze Age to late Antiquity.

1. Elon Heymans (Tel Aviv University) / Marleen Termeer (Leiden University)

Introduction: Rethinking early money and the state
Shunning a definition of ancient money, Schaps remarks that ‘for the historian tracing the beginning of an idea, a definition is a hindrance' (2004, 3–4). Similarly, predefined ideas about money’s relation to society may be misleading when trying to understand its early development. As we note in our session abstract, in ancient studies, money, and especially coinage, has been predominantly associated with the state, in theoretical opposition to the market (Hart 1986). In this paper, we use examples from early Roman Italy and the Iron Age eastern Mediterranean to argue that a strong focus on the state, as a context for the appearance of early money, may obscure our understanding of the range of different ways in which money could be socially embedded.
In Italy, it seems that the adoption of coinage by Rome – which was an addition, rather than a replacement of weighed bronze as money – was not so much a result of internal needs or developments in the Roman state, but rather a way to facilitate interaction with others on the Italian peninsula. In the Iron Age eastern Mediterranean it was the collapse of state control and its effects on trade networks at the end of the LBA, rather than a process of state formation, that led to a proliferation of the use of (precious) metal as a means of exchange, and ultimately as a form of money.
Rather than seeing the state as a determinant, these two cases serve as a starting point to explore the relation between money and the state.

2. David Wigg-Wolf (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)

The adoption of money by non-state societies: the example of Iron-Age northern Europe
As a result of contacts with the Mediterranean world,the societies living north of the Alps in the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age adopted coinage at various times. These were groupings with very different social structures to the Greek poleis, Hellenistic states or Rome, and their use of coinage could differ from that of their southern neighbours in many ways. This paper will examine how the 'Celti', and later the 'Germani', came to adopt and subsequently use coinage. Particular attention will be paid to the role of (non-)state and market as factors, and the actors involved.
The emergence of coinage in the North followed a very different trajectory from other areas; for example there was no long-standing tradition of hacksilber such as had existed in the Iberian peninsula. In early 3rd century BC Gaul it was probably returning mercenaries who brought back coins, triggering its production there. But did trade and the market play no role, for example in the contact zone near the Mediterranean coast? Tacitus writes of Germani near the limes (“proximi”) who were using coin in much the same way as the provincial population: is this visible in the archaeological and numismatic record?
A consideration of the hows and whys of coin use can in turn throw light on the structure and organisation of the Iron Age populations of northern Europe.

3. Andreas Murgan

Between lumps and coins – Italy in the first millennium BC
The ‚invention‘ of coinage in the 7th cent. BC in Asia minor as an important milestone in the development of the ancient societies spread soon across the whole Mediterranean area. Already in the 6th cent. BC coinage appeared in South Italy, issued by the Greek cities. Meanwhile, the Italic peoples had been using raw and formless pieces of copper alloy for centuries and continued to do so. The so-called aes rude was accompanied by heavy cast bronze bars and coins much later in the 3rd cent. BC.
Although trade between the Greek and Italic cities flourished, most of the latter ones did not take over the idea of coins for almost three centuries. Only in the late 4th and 3rd cent. BC many non-Greek peoples, like the Romans or the Etruscans, started to issue coins, which however did not replace the former forms of money: the archaeological record contains lumps and bars in contexts of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Two different types of money seem to have been in use simultaneously: the coins, officially issued by authorities, carrying specific messages, and the unformed objects, without a recognizable authority or message, being thus anonymous.
The introduction of coins by the Italic peoples occurred in troubled times that culminated in the 1st and 2nd Punic war. This paper wants to shed light on the question, why this change happened at exactly this moment, focussing on the social, political, and ritual aspects of money within the framework of state, religion and private market.

4. Nicholas Borek (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)

More than Just Coins: A Metrological Approach to Studying Coin Hoards from the Western Mediterranean c.550-470 BCE
The value of a hoard was not always determined by the number of coins it contained but the amount of silver it represented. This certainly appears to be true for coin hoards found in the Western Mediterranean during the Archaic period. For this reason, it is important to consider an approach that accounts for the metrological rather than strictly numismatic aspects of these hoards. By analyzing the contents of all known hoards from the region, including those found in "An Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards", the "Coin Hoards" series, and other recent publications, it might be possible to determine if the coins were counted or weighed in certain cases. The results have broad implications.
One of the traditional distinctions between bullion and early coinage is that the value of a coin was guaranteed by the minting authority. This characteristic, which was established by stamping coins with the mark of the state, is said to have eliminated the need for weighing coins. However, a number of coin hoards indicate that their contents were probably weighed in the manner of bullion. This suggests that concepts like the state’s “guarantee” of value were less entrenched and slower to take effect in local contexts than it is assumed. More importantly, it fits a larger narrative in which the state and its role in the use of coinage were not fully developed in this region during the Archaic period.

5. Merav Haklai (Ben-Gurion University, Israel)

How money defined the Romans
Scholarly discussions often focus on what money is and how to define it. This paper, however, does not aim to pursue how the Romans defined money, rather how money defined the Romans. The appreciation that money is a convention to use symbols to represent value is far from new. Already Plato (R. 371b) regarded money as a symbol created for the sake of exchange, implying that money was an outcome of economic interaction. Roman legal sources preserve another approach that gives the state a pivotal role in creating money (Paul. Dig. 18.1.1.pr.). Such an approach is not surprising coming from jurists living in the Roman empire, where money was used by the state in almost every aspect of its sovereignty. Yet, the importance of money in Roman political tradition was not initiated by Roman imperialism, neither by Roman familiarity with the Greek invention of coinage. Centuries before the Romans knew coins, before they established their empire, even before the res publica was founded – the Roman state used money to define members of its community. This paper argues in favour of an umbilical relation between money and the Roman state. It focuses on the archaic Roman state and the revolutionary Servian reforms, which redefined money while simultaneously using it to define who was a Roman and what his civilian obligations were.