Hoards, Small Change and the Origin of Coinage

Abstract

Numismatists necessarily deal in minute detail, often so minute that it passes unnoticed by those used to a larger scale; yet as much historical knowledge may depend on such minutiae as on the far larger details of sculpture or architecture. This difference of scale, however, is dangerous because it tends to increase the gulf between numismatists, who seem to be pursuing ever smaller details, and historians, who want to be told how coinage may affect the larger picture with which they are concerned. The following pages are an attempt to assemble and evaluate some of the very incomplete, but annually increasing, evidence, which bears on the function and use of coinage in the Greek world in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The treatment will be divided into three sections:1. Evidence for the movement of coins from their various areas of origin.2. Evidence for the incidence of fractional coinage.3. The implications of 1 and 2 for an understanding of the function of early Greek coinage.