The Evidence of Numismatics

2020 ◽  
pp. 796-818
Author(s):  
Jürgen Strothmann
Keyword(s):  
Gold Standard ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Fiscal System ◽  
City States ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Significant Attention

Numismatics in Merovingian Gaul offer a rather different image of the seventh century than we find in our most important source, the Histories of Gregory of Tours. Only the coins reveal that the moneyers, consisting of about 2,000 individuals between 585 and 670, were an important functional elite. Coinage, based on the gold standard following the Byzantine tradition, served as a fiscal instrument for levying taxes and other revenues. Moreover, there were no significant regional differences reflecting the practices of individual kings as coinage was part of a fiscal system that spanned over all of Gaul. Because the place names on these coins typically identify political units such as civitates (city-states) and pagi (rural political units), we can use them to understand political continuity in Gaul in the seventh century since these were the same city-states as in Roman times. Numismatics thus serve as a corrective to Gregory of Tours, who did not give significant attention to the civitates despite the fact that they did not lose their relevance for politics, finance, and society.

Under the Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-115
Author(s):  
Avraham Faust
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Place Names ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Dramatic Decline ◽  
First Time

Chapter 4 (‘Under the Empire: Settlement and Demography in the Southwestern Margins of the Assyrian Empire in the Seventh Century BCE’) describes the settlement and demography in the period of Assyrian control. Comparing the detailed information available from the region with that provided in Chapter 2 allows us to estimate what were the consequences of the imperial takeover. The evidence shows that the provinces in the north were mostly devastated, whereas the client kingdoms prospered and, moreover, for the first time in history the south flourished more than the north. The dramatic decline in the north is also exemplified by the large number of place names that were forgotten following the Assyrian conquests. The chapter ends with an appendix on the demographic significance of deportations.

THE SEVENTH-CENTURY ISLAMIC GOLD STANDARD

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-74
Author(s):  
Benedikt Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Gold Standard ◽  
Seventh Century

STATES AND EMPIRES IN ANCIENT MESOAMERICA

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlen F. Chase ◽  
Diane Z. Chase ◽  
Michael E. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
State Development ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
City States ◽  
Political Units

AbstractAncient Mesoamerican polities are an important source of data for considerations of state development, despite internal debate over their size and complexity. We review complex political units, usually referred to as “states” and “empires,” in ancient Mesoamerica and reach the following conclusions: these polities tended to be hegemonic, rather than territorial, in composition; they melded ritual and political action; and they utilized the ruler as a symbol of the “body politic.” We also note the apparently larger size of most Maya polities as compared to other Mesoamerican city-states. Besides reviewing the commonalities among ancient Mesoamerican states, we also highlight the variation among these polities and the need to consider historic and archaeological data contextually in making interpretations of political structure.

Envoi

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
Political Units

The significance of material culture, and the portable objects that are part of it, is dictated by people’s economic and social power, and their need to give physical expression to their status and aspirations. As in any society, the ability and wish to acquire, display, and use metals, glass, gems, or pots depended in the Middle Ages upon the supply of raw materials and finished products, and the demand that their availability might meet or create. The island of Britain had never been united by the Romans, and different reactions to their army’s withdrawal were only to be expected. Generally, however, power-seeking leaders establishing petty and impermanent fiefdoms relied largely upon being able to demonstrate their success by the acquisition of booty that could be profligately consumed, shown off, or distributed to families and supporters. Swords, brooches, or drinking-vessels symbolize how these social affinities were created and maintained, whether recorded in graves, hoards, and other deliberate deposits, or in accidental loss or intentional jettisoning of what was beyond reuse. The precise meanings that were given to gold and silver, glass and garnets, changed according to their contexts; some gave physical expression to an ambition to inherit the prestigious authority of Rome, others gave credence to stories of descent from far-travelling heroes, while others stressed a person’s place within their own immediate society. Yet artefacts such as pottery show that even people whose priority was subsistence were part of a wider network of contact. External factors influenced behaviour: no leader of a group in Britain could negotiate directly with the Byzantine emperor for the subsidies that brought gold into western Europe, so none could take action to ensure its continuing availability during the seventh century. Its relative value changed as it became rarer, so that it had to be used sparingly if at all; consequently, for some people the display of access to it became even more important. Contemporaneously, however, Christianity’s infiltration changed beliefs about what happened after death, and how people should use and dispose of their worldly goods. In bigger political units, using symbols to show origins and allegiances mattered less, but the large numbers of artefacts now known show that prosperity was not confined in the eighth and ninth centuries to the royal families.

Economic change after the agricultural revolution in Southeast Asia?

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (339) ◽  
pp. 112-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte L. King ◽  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Charles Higham ◽  
Nancy Tayles ◽  
Una Strand Viðarsdóttir ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Isotope Analysis ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early States ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
North Eastern

Three prehistoric sites in the Upper Mun River Valley of north-eastern Thailand have provided a detailed chronological succession comprising 12 occupation phases. These represent occupation spanning 2300 years, from initial settlement in the Neolithic (seventeenth century BC) through to the Iron Age, ending in the seventh century AD with the foundation of early states. The precise chronology in place in the Upper Mun River Valley makes it possible to examine changes in social organisation, technology, agriculture and demography against a background of climatic change. In this area the evidence for subsistence has been traditionally drawn from the biological remains recovered from occupation and mortuary contexts. This paper presents the results of carbon isotope analysis to identify and explain changes in subsistence over time and between sites, before comparing the results with two sites of the Sakon Nakhon Basin, located 230km to the north-east, to explore the possibility of regional differences.

Gotlandic pottery outside Gotland

Światowit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Thomas Eriksson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Northern Sweden ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Political Units ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Made In

The article discusses contacts and networks along the eastern coast of Sweden and around the Baltic Sea. The focus is on the decorated pottery c. 0–700 AD. Sweden and Scandinavia had different regional styles of pottery during this period. One of the most distinctive Scandinavian styles is found on Öland and Gotland. This style is distinguished by the elaborate use of stamps and vessels with handles positioned from the rim to the shoulder. Vessels made in this style are found outside the large islands, notably in Svealand, i.e. the lake Mälaren Basin in central Sweden, as well as in northern Sweden. More interesting is the spread and influences in the Dollkeim-Kovrovo culture, in north-eastern Poland, and Oblast Kaliningrad. During the Roman Iron Age, a special type of beaker is found from the Mälar basin to Gotland/Öland and further on in Oblast Kaliningrad. The connection can also be seen in dress ornaments and other artefacts. The regional differences in the pottery decrease during the Vendel Period (c. 550–800 AD). A new style of stamped vessels is spread from the Langobards in northern Italy to England and Scandinavia and marks a new, more uniform material culture. This marks probably a new area of more complex and centralised political units.

The Formation of Greek City-States: Status, Class, and Land Tenure Systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (04) ◽  
pp. 615-657
Author(s):  
Julien Zurbach
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Greek City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
City States ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

Recent scholarship has often remarked on the opposition between two conceptions of Archaic Greek societies, relating either to a legal and static definition of status or to a notion of status as personal and fluid, linked to diversified strategies for obtaining social distinction. This article seeks to move beyond this opposition by examining the history of status groups in the Archaic period. After analyzing the key stages within the complex historiography devoted to this subject, it goes on to provide a history of status groups during the formative period of the city-states. The creation of new status groups was an essential feature of the city-states’ history and was primarily linked to indebtedness and war. Although statuses were collective and often imposed from the outside, they nevertheless display a historical development that is central to the formation of city-states. In the seventh century BCE, new groups were created in response to the aristocracy’s need for a workforce. The resulting conflict led to an evolution of the systems regulating access to land and food. This reorganization of entitlement, which was how communities responded to the social and economic crisis they faced, was in turn based on the creation of new status groups. Social conflict led to the definition of a new system of status groups.

scholarly journals The Long Road Out of Eden: Early Dynastic Temples, a Quantitative Approach to the Bent-Axis Shrines

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 666
Author(s):  
Pascal Butterlin
Keyword(s):  
Surface Area ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
Original Matrix ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Early Dynastic ◽  
City States ◽  
Social Units

This study was conducted to quantitatively assess the architectural data stemming from 70 buildings usually considered as bent-axis temples, a type of Mesopotamian temple mainly constructed from 2900 to 2300–2200 BC. The study reviews, region-by-region and site-by-site, the dimensions of the rooms considered the “holy of holies”, registering width, length, and surface area. The results are discussed in comparison to the previous reception rooms of the tripartite buildings, considered the original matrix from which these shrines developed. The chronological and regional differences that are outlined provide some insights about the kind of social units that were involved in the use of those buildings, which were key structures in the urban fabric of Early City states.

Cheshire’s Celtic Place-Names

2020 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-167
Author(s):  
Andrew Breeze
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
South West ◽  
Battle Of Brunanburh

Cheshire, settled by Anglo-Saxons in the later seventh century, has many placenames of British origin, as well as Irish place-names given by tenth-century migrants from Ireland. Twenty-seven real or supposed instances are discussed here: Arclid, Antrobus, Arrow, Bollin, Brynn, Cilgwri, Crewe, Dane, Dee, Eccleston, Goyt, Ince, Landican, Liscard, Lostock, Lyme, Mellor, Mottram, Noctorum, Peover, Rhedynfre, Tarvin, Tintwistle, Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg, Weaver, Werneth, Wheelock. Ten of them are provided with derivations at variance with The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names and other handbooks. Also discussed are three Welsh forms (Cilgwri, Rhedynfre, Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg) sometimes related to Cheshire. Although the second is certainly Farndon in the county’s south-west, the first and third have no Cheshire link. Cilgwri may be identified as a place near Corwen, Denbighshire. Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg or ‘Brunian House, House on (the River) Browney’, a book-name for the location of the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, should be identified with the Roman fortress of Lanchester above the River Brune or Browney, Co. Durham. Hence Brunanburh means ‘fortress of the Browney’. Other historical information is provided by Arclid, apparently the Arecluta where the British-Latin writer Gildas was born in 493. Analysis of toponyms thus provides new data on Cheshire’s past, while refuting earlier theories.

Social Histories and Regional Perspectives in the Neolithic of Lowland England

1995 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 117-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Harding
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Regional Variability ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Recent studies have illustrated a series of marked regional differences in the distribution and design of Neolithic monuments throughout lowland England. They fail, however, to provide an interpretative framework for the discussion of these contrasts. This paper proposes that such regional variability can only be understood with a scale of analysis which outlines the fundamental distinctions between political communities in different parts of lowland England. It is argued that factors such as population size and density can be clearly related to the variability from area to area in the number and structural complexity of causewayed enclosures. It is also possible to link these demographic factors to a long-term process of social change whereby the small autonomous groups of the earlier Neolithic were transformed into larger political units. The cursus and henge monuments were an important component of this process, and regional variability in the distribution and design of these sites can be taken to demonstrate that the extent of this transformation differed throughout lowland England. It is evident that there were important contrasts between those regions which had previously been distinguished by the variability in the layout of causewayed enclosures. The stylised morphology of the cursus and henge monuments appears to have deliberately accentuated such contrasts. These sites therefore provide clear evidence for the existence of long-term regional traditions across lowland England.

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