Crisis? What crisis? Recycling of silver for Roman Republican coinage

Abstract

Dated measurements of lead pollution in deep Greenland ice have become a useful proxy to monitor historical events because interruptions in lead-silver production result in fluctuations in lead emissions. However, the application of the lead emission record has not perhaps received the attention it deserves because of the difficulty in connecting macroscale events, such as wars and plagues, to their economic repercussions. For instance, although debasement of silver coinage with copper has been proposed as a reasonable response to interruptions in silver production, reductions in fineness of the silver denarius, the backbone of Roman coinage from the late third century BC, are not always coincident with decreases in lead deposited in Greenland. We propose that extensive recycling of silver that is evident in the numismatic record can better explain drops in lead emissions and, thereby, the responses to major historical events, such as warfare in the silver-producing areas of the Iberian Peninsula and southern France during the middle and late Roman Republic.