Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:57:00.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rethinking numismatics. The archaeology of coins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Fleur Kemmers  and
Nanouschka Myrberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper sets out to re-member coins into archaeological discourse. It is argued that coins, as part of material culture, need to be examined within the theoretical framework of historical archaeology and material-culture studies. Through several case studies we demonstrate how coins, through their integration of text, image and existence as material objects, offer profound insights not only into matters of economy and the ‘big history’ of issuers and state organization but also into ‘small histories’, cultural values and the agency of humans and objects. In the formative period of archaeology in the 19th century the study of coins played an important role in the development of new methods and concepts. Today, numismatics is viewed as a field apart. The mutual benefits of our approach to the fields of archaeology and numismatics highlight the need for a new and constructive dialogue between the disciplines.

Keywords

coinshistorical archaeologymaterial cultureacademic disciplinediscourseagencymateriality
Type
Notes
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , June 2011 , pp. 87 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aarts, J., 2005: Coins, money and exchange in the Roman world. A cultural-economic perspective, Archaeological dialogues 12, 1–28.Google Scholar
Aarts, J., and Roymans, N., 2009: Tribal emission or imperial coinage? Ideas about the production and circulation of the so-called AVAVCIA coinages in the Rhineland, in van Heesch, J. and Heeren, I. (eds), Coinage in the Iron Age. Essays in honour of Simone Scheers, London, 1–17.Google Scholar
Andrén, A., 1998: Between artefacts and text. Historical archaeology in global perspective, New York.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (ed.), 1986: The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barndon, R., 2004: A discussion of magic and medicines in East African iron working. Actors and artefacts in technology, Norwegian archaeological review 37 (1), 21–40.Google Scholar
Barth, F., 1969: Introduction, in Barth, F. (ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference, Boston, 9–38.Google Scholar
Berg, K., 1989: Coins in churches, a means of payment? Part one, in Clarke, H. and Schia, E. (eds), Coins and archaeology, Oxford (BAR International Series 55), 77–89.Google Scholar
Berger, F., 1996: Kalkriese 1. Die römischen Fundmünzen, Mainz (Römisch-Germanische Forschungen 55).Google Scholar
Bertell, M., 2003: Tor och den nordiska åskan. Föreställningar kring världsaxeln, Stockholm (Diss. Stockholms universitet, religionshistoriska institutionen).Google Scholar
Bolin, S., 1953: Mohammed, Charlemagne and Ruric, Scandinavian economic history review 1953 (1), 5–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budd, P., and Taylor, T., 1995: The Faerie smith meets the bronze industry. Magic versus science in the interpretation of prehistoric metal-making, World archaeology 27 (1), 133–43.Google Scholar
Burström, M., 1990: Järnframställning och gravritual. En strukturalistisk tolkning av järnslagg i vikingatida gravar i Gästrikland (with English summary), Fornvännen 85, 261–71.Google Scholar
Burström, M., 1998: Mingling with things, Fennoscandia archaeologica 15, 31–33.Google Scholar
Casey, J., and Reece, R., 1974: Coins and the archaeologist, Oxford (British Archaeological Reports 4).Google Scholar
Christophersen, A., 1992: Mellom tingenes tale og tekstenes tyranni. Om faglig identitet og sjelvförståelse i historisk arkeologi. META – medeltidsarkeologisk tidskrift 1992 (4), 70–87.Google Scholar
Clarke, H., and Schia, E., 1989: Coins and archaeology, Oxford (BAR International Series 556).Google Scholar
Creighton, J., 2000: Coins and power in Late Iron Age Britain, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dant, T., 1999: Material culture in the social world. Values, activities, lifestyles, Buckingham.Google Scholar
Davies, G., 1996: A history of money from ancient times to the present day, rev. edn, Cardiff.Google Scholar
Deetz, J., 1996: In small things forgotten. An archaeology of early American life, New York.Google Scholar
Derrida, J., 1978: Writing and difference, London.Google Scholar
Eckardt, H., and Williams, H., 2003: Objects without a past? The use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves, in Williams, H. (ed.), Archaeologies of remembrance. Death and memory in past societies, New York, 141–70.Google Scholar
Ekengren, F., 2009: Ritualization – hybridization – fragmentation. The mutability of Roman vessels in Germania Magna AD 1–400, Lund (Acta archaeologica Lundensia, Series prima in 4o, 28).Google Scholar
Ellesmere, Earl of (translator), 1848: Guide to northern archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, A.P., 2005: Gifts for the golden gods. Iron Age hoards of torques and coins, in Haselgrove, C. and Wigg-Wolf, D. (eds), Iron Age coinage and ritual practice, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 20), 157–82.Google Scholar
Galloway, P., 2006: Material culture and text. Exploring the spaces within and between, in Hall, M. and Silliman, S. (eds), Historical archaeology, Malden, 42–64.Google Scholar
Gansum, T., 2004: Role the bones – from iron to steel, Norwegian archaeological review 37 (1), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassie, H., 1999: Material culture, Bloomington.Google Scholar
Gräslund, A-S., 1965–66: Charonsmynt i vikingatida gravar? TOR: meddelanden från Uppsala universitets museum för nordiska fornsaker 16, 168–97.Google Scholar
Graves-Brown, P.M. (ed.), 2000: Matter, materiality and modern culture, London.Google Scholar
Grierson, Ph., 1960: The monetary reforms of ‘Abd al-Malik. Their metrological basis and their financial repercussions, Journal of the economic and social history of the Orient 3 (3), 241–64.Google Scholar
Haaland, R., 2004: Technology, transformation and symbolism. Ethnographic perspectives on European iron working, Norwegian archaeological review 37 (1), 1–19.Google Scholar
Hall, M., 1999: Subaltern voices? Finding the spaces between things and words, in P.P. Funari, M. Hall and S. Jones (eds), Historical archaeology. Back from the edge, London, 193–203.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., Pluciennik, M. and Tarlow, S. (eds), 2002: Thinking through the body. Archaeologies of corporeality, New York.Google Scholar
Hannestad, N. (1988): Roman art and imperial policy, Aarhus.Google Scholar
Haselgrove, C., 1987: Iron Age coinage in south-east England. The archaeological context, Oxford (BAR British Series 174).Google Scholar
Haselgrove, C., 2005: A trio of temples, in Haselgrove, C. and Wigg-Wolf, D. (eds), Iron Age coinage and ritual practice, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 20), 381–418.Google Scholar
Hed Jakobsson, A., 1999: Towns, plots, crafts and fertility. Traces of a power ideology, Current Swedish archaeology 7, 37–53.Google Scholar
Herbert, E.W., 1993: Iron, gender, and power. Rituals of transformation in African societies, Bloomington.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1982: Symbols in action. Ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hosler, D., 1995: Sound, color and meaning in the metallurgy of ancient West Mexico, World archaeology 27, 100–15.Google Scholar
Houston, S.D., and Taube, K., 2000: An archaeology of the senses. Perception and cultural expression in ancient Mesoamerica, Cambridge archaeological journal 10 (2), 261–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howgego, C.,Heuchert, V. and Burnett, A. (eds), 2005: Coinage and identity in the Roman provinces, Oxford.Google Scholar
Insoll, T. (ed.), 2007: The archaeology of identities. A reader, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, S., 1997: The archaeology of ethnicity. Constructing identities in the past and the present, New York.Google Scholar
Kemmers, F., 2006: Coins for a legion. An analysis of the coin finds from the Augustan legionary fortress and Flavian canabae legionis at Nijmegen, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 21).Google Scholar
Kilger, C., 2008: Wholeness and holiness. Counting, weighing and valuing silver in the early Viking period, in Skre, D. (ed.), Means of exchange. Dealing with silver in the Viking age, Aarhus (Norske Oldfunn 23), 253–325.Google Scholar
Klackenberg, H., 1992: Moneta nostra. Monetarisering i medeltidens Sverige, Stockholm (Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 10).Google Scholar
Klindt-Jensen, O., 1975: A history of Scandinavian archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Klüßendorf, N., 2007: Money and identity in a divided country. Observations from East and West Germany between 1948 and 1990, in Cunz, R. (ed.), Money and identity, Hannover, 29–54.Google Scholar
Kok, M.S.M., 2008: The homecoming of religious practice. An analysis of offering sites in the wet low-lying parts of the landscape in the Oer-IJ area (2500 BC–AD 450), Rotterdam.Google Scholar
Kroll, J.H., 1997: review of S. von Reden, Exchange in ancient Greece, American journal of archaeology 101, 175–76.Google Scholar
Kurke, L., 1999: Coins, bodies, games, and gold. The politics of meaning in archaic Greece, Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightfoot, K.G., 1995: Culture contact studies. Redefining the relationship between prehistoric and historical archaeology, American antiquity 60 (2), 199–217.Google Scholar
Mäkeler, H., 2010: Der Schatz des Joel ben Uri Halewi. Der Kölner ‘Rathausfund’ von 1953 als Zeugnis der Judenpogrome im Jahr 1349, in Schäfke, W. and Trier, M. (eds), Mittelalter in Köln. Eine Auswahl aus den Beständen des Kölnischen Stadtmuseums, Köln, 111–17, 356–407.Google Scholar
Marques, J.F., 2007: The euro changeover and numerical intuition for prices in the old and new currencies, Journal of consumer policy 2007 (4), 393–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, M., 1991: Das spätrömisch-frühmittelalterliche Gräberfeld von Kaiseraugst, Kt. Aargau. Teil A: Text, Derendingen (Basler Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte 5A).Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1994 (1944): Phenomenology of perception, New York.Google Scholar
Miller, D. (ed.), 1998: Material cultures. Why some things matter, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S., and Parsons, L., 2008: The brain as a cultural artefact, Cambridge archaeological journal 18 (3), 415–22.Google Scholar
Morris, I., 1992: Death-ritual and social structure in classical antiquity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Myrberg, N., 2008: Ett eget värde. Gotlands tidigaste myntning, ca 1140–1220, Stockholm (Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 45).Google Scholar
Myrberg, N., 2009: The social identity of coin hoards. An example of theory and practice in the space between numismatics and archaeology, in von Kaenel, H.-M. and Kemmers, F. (eds), Coins in context 1, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 23), 157–72.Google Scholar
Myrberg, N., 2010: The colour of money. Crusaders and coins in the thirteenth-century Baltic Sea, in Fahlander, F. and Kjellström, A. (eds), Making sense of things. Archaeologies of sensory perception, Stockholm (Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 53), 83–102.Google Scholar
Nash, D., 1978: Plus ça change. Currency in central Gaul from Julius Caesar to Nero, in Carson, R.A.G. and Kraay, C.M. (eds), Scripta nummaria romana. Essays presented to Humphrey Sutherland, London, 12–31.Google Scholar
Nick, M., 2005: Am Ende des Regenbogens . . . Ein Interpretationsversuch von Hortfunden mit keltischen Goldmünzen, in Haselgrove, C. and Wigg-Wolf, D. (eds), Iron Age coinage and ritual practice, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 20), 115–55.Google Scholar
Odén, B., 2009: Sture Bolin – en ‘världsstjärna’ inom historieforskningen, in Björk, R. and Johansson, A. (eds), Svenska historiker. Från medeltid till våra dagar, Stockholm, 514–25.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2003: Material culture after text. Re-membering things, Norwegian archaeological review 36 (2), 87–104.Google Scholar
Östergren, M., 1989: Mellan stengrund och stenhus. Gotlands vikingatida silverskatter som boplatsindikation, Stockholm (Diss. Stockholms Universitet).Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, J.K., 1999: Archaeology, myth-history and the tyranny of the text. Chalkidike, Torone and Thucydides, Oxford journal of archaeology 18 (4), 377–94.Google Scholar
Papadopoulos, J.K., 2002: Minting identity. Coinage, ideology and the economics of colonization in Akhaian Magna Graecia, Cambridge archaeological journal 12 (1), 21–55.Google Scholar
Parry, J., and Bloch, M. (eds), 1989: Money and the morality of exchange, New York.Google Scholar
Petersson, M., 1948: S:t Jörgen i Åhus, Meddelanden från Lunds universitets historiska museum (1948), 95–162.Google Scholar
Przybyszewski, K., and Tyszka, T., 2007: Emotional factors in currency perception, Journal of consumer policy, 355–65.Google Scholar
Rathje, W., and Murphy, C., 2001: Rubbish! The archaeology of garbage, Tucson.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C., Frith, C. and Malafouris, L., 2009: The sapient mind. Archaeology meets neuroscience, Oxford.Google Scholar
Rickman, G., 1980: The corn supply of ancient Rome, Oxford.Google Scholar
Seaford, R., 2004: Money and the early Greek mind, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, M., 1998: Life of an artefact, Fennoscandia archaeologica 15, 15–42.Google Scholar
Small, D.B. (ed.), 1995: Methods in the Mediterranean. Historical and archaeological views on texts and archaeology, Leiden.Google Scholar
South, S. (ed.), 1977: Method and theory in historical archaeology, New York.Google Scholar
Tarlow, S., 2000: Emotion in archaeology, Current anthropology 41 (5), 713–46.Google Scholar
Thomsen, C.J., 1836: Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighet, Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1994: A phenomenology of landscape. Places, paths, and monuments, Oxford.Google Scholar
Van Arsdell, R. D., 1989: Take out the gold but keep the colour, Spink numismatic circular 97 (3), 82–83.Google Scholar
Von Reden, S., 1995: Exchange in ancient Greece, London.Google Scholar
White, R., 1988: Roman and Celtic objects from Anglo-Saxon graves. A catalogue and an interpretation of their use, Oxford (BAR British Series 191).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wigg-Wolf, D., 2005: Coins and ritual in late Iron Age and early Roman sanctuaries in the territory of the Treveri, in Haselgrove, C. and Wigg-Wolf, D. (eds), Iron Age coinage and ritual practice, Mainz (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 20), 361–79.Google Scholar
Zäch, B., 2005: Images of the euro. National representation and European identity, in C. Alfaro, C. Marcos and P. Otero (eds), XIII Congreso Internacional de Numismática, Madrid, 1429–33.Google Scholar
Zanker, P., 1987: Augustus und die Macht der Bilder, Munich.Google Scholar