Usage de la monnaie en Méditerranée orientale (Ve-Ier s. a. C.). Réseaux d'échanges locaux, régionaux, internationaux – NOMISMA

NOMISMA. Coinage and its uses in the Eastern Mediterranean (5th – 1st c. BC). Local, regional and international commercial networks. For some years, the history of coinage in the ancient Greek world has been developing a radically different approach, with regard to both the methods and the results, and is steadily becoming a part of economic history. The history of coinage is henceforth able to bring essential answers to a current debate in economic history: the role of the regions in trade, and more generally the respective roles of local, regional and international economic networks. Until now, these questions have generally been addressed within the framework of studies focused only on a specific region or state. It is time now to expand these studies, by means of an international and multidisciplinary team consisting largely of young scholars, in order to compare the results of studies on different regions of the ancient Greek world, to examine similarities and differences, continuities and step-changes in the period between the fifth and the first century BC, i.e. from the time when the Athenian coinage became an international currency and when bronze coinage appeared, used in everyday transactions, until the period when Greek coinages underwent significant changes in the context of the Roman Empire. The team brought together for this project is a multidisciplinary one. It proposes to make an important contribution to this debate by studying coinage and its uses in the Eastern Mediterranean by comparing the numismatic evidence with the literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources, and by examining the monetary history of these regions (Western Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Islands, Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia and Cyprus), from the Vth to the Ist c. BC. The creation of dispersal maps and graphs in order to analyse the relative shares of the different coinages in circulation, using data from excavations and hoards, will require a full-time employee on a fixed-term contract. These graphs and maps will be made available to historians, through a website, and will be a useful tool for them. In addition, a systematic inventory will be compiled of references to coins and more generally of evidence about how coinage was used, as well as about other forms of wealth, in different literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources. A colloquium will be held in collaboration with the French School at Athens in 2010, which will add to the value of these research results.