The First Numismatists

Innovative and infinitely varied, the many coinages of the ancient world inspired much commentary and speculation by philosophers, poets, playwrights, and religious leaders. Among these were Plato, Aristophanes, Pliny the Elder, and Jesus of Nazareth. These early numismatists took note of exchange rates, coin-types, hoards, counterfeits, forgeries, and monetary superstitions. Rulers and minting officials, such as Rome’s tresviri monetales, knew a great deal about the history of coins and sometimes paid homage to old designs. Folklore spun from Judas’s infamous thirty pieces of silver an elaborate tale of this money’s long journey across many lands. Medieval Europe witnessed major changes in levels of monetization and produced only one notable numismatic commentary from the pen of the scholastic bishop Nicholas Oresme.

Understanding Hoards

The importance of coin hoards makes it imperative to study them properly. After classifying eight different kinds of hoards, this chapter shows how some historians and numismatists have not treated the evidence carefully. For example, the “Marner Paradox” warns against our natural impulse to reconstruct in detail the identities and lifestyles of hoarders. It is also important to remember that it is the non-recovery of buried treasure that is meaningful and measurable. Coin hoards are best investigated collectively rather than individually. In this way, certain categories of hoards provide a Misery Index that can illuminate changing historical conditions and the responses of populations to them. An example is the No-Tomorrow scenario faced by the victims of Vesuvius. Finally, hoard data are used to calculate how quickly the gold of Alexander the Great disappeared from circulation.

Science and Pseudoscience

In the nineteenth century, political, social, and industrial revolutions shattered the class ceiling of Renaissance and early modern numismatics. Wealthy enthusiasts and dedicated academics from outside European aristocracy gained greater access to collectible coins and soon organized themselves into clubs and learned societies. They sponsored research journals, adopted new technologies such as photography, introduced new investigative methods such as the die study, and established numismatics as a scientific discipline with a foothold in university curricula. Yet, even as numismatics became more and more scientific in its aims and methods, old notions endured about coins and physiognomy. The rise of phrenology as a pseudoscience infiltrated the field and still undermines the historical value of some numismatic research. Another unfortunate development has been the estrangement of numismatics and archaeology because the latter now repudiates its antiquarian origins and generally denounces coin collecting as a form of looting.

From the Coin’s Point of View

“Money talks” is an old adage in need of a fresh interpretation. Building upon the foundational narratives of modern novelists, numismatists may now use theories of memes and object agency to explain the behaviors of coins as if our money were independent of human control. This exercise allows the reader to think of coinage in an entirely new way, giving coins an active life cycle that is Darwinian in its struggles to survive and replicate. This explains in turn some odd human behaviors, such as deferring important decisions to flipped coins, manufacturing coins that cost far more than their face value, idling large amounts of change into “nuisance jars,” and making most coins round for the past 2,600 years.

The Invention of Coins

Early forms of money included agricultural commodities and metals, such as silver bullion and barley in Mesopotamia or gold, silver, and bronze in Egypt. The fungibility of metals made them particularly useful. Aristotle provides one view of how barter gave way to coined money, but this question remains contentious. The first coins appeared in Lydia near the end of the seventh century BC, but the spread of this monetary revolution owed much to the neighboring Greeks. Mints in many Greek poleis issued coins that not only served economic needs, but also functioned as state-sponsored advertising, art, and propaganda. The Romans and others followed suit, while independent coinage traditions emerged in China and India.

The Ethos and Ethics of Collecting

Many archaeologists insist that collecting coins of historical importance is tantamount to looting. This chapter examines the ethos and ethics of collecting by introducing a case study. In a pointed dialogue, a biologist who collects coins with a nautical/marine ecology theme confronts the objections of college students taking a numismatics course. The collector explains his interest in coins and shares with the class some of the results. Students raise questions about the visitor’s right to own rare artifacts, no matter his good intentions. The commercial side of numismatics is explored, as well as the role played by museums in curating artifacts. When called upon to referee if not resolve the debate, the professor explains how paleontology might offer a better model for numismatics than does archaeology.

Finding Hoards

In literature, folklore, and popular culture, coins have a powerful association with buried treasure. That association often includes, of course, a colorful array of dragons, elves, leprechauns, and pirates. This chapter examines coin hoards as they appear in the works of Aristophanes, Plautus, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. Among historical hoards are those reported by Cicero, Samuel Pepys, and a curious testimonial involving a witch in a medieval manuscript from 1366. Modern discoveries of ancient and medieval coin hoards number in the tens of thousands; this chapter examines some notable examples from Pompeii, Herculaneum, Britain, and Afghanistan.

Introduction

The “simple” word coin once caused a constitutional crisis in American history that reveals just how surprising and significant this subject can be. Today, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin raise even harder questions about the nature of money in general and coins in particular. This chapter explains why coinage has a social, political, spiritual, and cultural function alongside its more familiar economic one. Many users overlook the magic and mystery of their coinage because they have no experience with numismatics, the discipline dedicated to understanding this earliest form of mobile communication based on small disks of information technology. This chapter lays out why coins matter, and why everyone deserves a basic introduction to numismatics as a major contributor to our knowledge of world history and cultures.

The Second Wave

Renaissance antiquarians relied heavily upon coins to reconnect with the Classical world. Popes and princes became avid collectors, stocking their Kunstkammern (cabinets of curiosities) with thousands of numismatic treasures. Collecting led to cataloguing and research, but also to the production of forgeries and fantasy coins to feed the antiquities market and to fill the gaps of history. Books showcased imagined coin portraits of every notable figure beginning with Adam and Eve. This preoccupation with portraiture abetted the use of physiognomy by numismatists, who sought psychological insights from the images of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Nero, and others depicted on coins. The efforts of numismatists such as Joseph Eckhel to collect and classify all known ancient coin-types, numbering in the tens of thousands, eventually made it impossible for a single individual to comprehend all of numismatics.

The Journey Continues

The final chapter emphasizes that numismatics may be one of the oldest fields of humanistic inquiry, but it is still evolving in step with other, more modern disciplines. Researchers today want to know more about the non-elites of history, the nameless masses whose lives made possible the celebrated deeds of kings, queens, and emperors. Coins may seem particularly unsuited to this task since they are state-sponsored ego-facts bearing the names, faces, and boasts of the rich and famous. Cognitive numismatics, however, provides a new way of seeing in coins the common people—how they worked, what they thought, when they had a bad day. This approach brings the reader back to meme theory within the busy confines of an ancient mint. It completes the life cycle of a coin by examining its removal from circulation as an economic instrument, perhaps ending its journey as some other artifact of everyday experience.