The Asia Minor and the Birth of Coinage Project

In the seventh century BC, the first coins were minted in western Asia Minor, in Lydia and Ionia. These provinces formed an interface between Near Eastern monarchies and Greek culture. Up to then, pure metals (mostly pieces of silver cut up as Hacksilber) and convertible commodities such as grain had been used as means of payment in both spheres. According to the prevailing doctrine, coinage was invented in order to replace the archaic ways of exchange. In fact, the earliest coinage neither continued nor (in the strict sense) replaced the pre--coinage money. It was something entirely new. The earliest coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. The early electrum coinage was most successful, falling into c. 300 series (the Lydian Empire and Ionian city--states such as Miletus and Ephesus among them) and lasting some 100 years before being gradually replaced by gold and silver coins. As the proportion of gold and silver was exceedingly variable from series to series, it was argued that ancient traders had to ignore the variability of the intrinsic value, because it might have been impossible to disassemble natural electrum into its elements. Recent analyses, however, have demonstrated that the alloy of early electrum coins was mixed artificially: the variability is not the result of incapability but intended manipulation! This project will examine how ancient market participants reacted to such manipulations. Both numismatic methods and metal analyses will be applied. Die studies of a large sample of the earliest series (from the second half of the seventh century) will be made. At the same time the relevant electrum coins kept by some major museums (Berlin, Vienna, Paris, New York) will be analysed for gold, silver, and copper. So it will be possible for the first time to compare the earliest series with one another across all important factors: denominational spectrum, number of dies, metrology, and alloys. A hoard from Ephesus, the so--called Artemision deposit will play a key role for chronology. Thanks to recent archaeological investigations, this hoard can be securely dated to the third quarter of the seventh century BC. For the sixth century chronological clues are still hard to find. A working hypothesis is nevertheless possible: according to economic axioms, any issuer of coins is likely to undersell the standard of the circulating coins in order to make profit. This hypothesis has withstood some tests: Phocaea reduced the gold percentage of her electrum coins twice, and the gradual reduction of weight norms can also be established. Monetary economics has widely ignored the invention of coinage. This project will examine the core of this ancient innovation: the manipulatory factor.

The earliest coins of the western hemisphere were minted on the west coast of what is now Turkey. They did not consist of a single metal but of an alloy of gold, silver and copper, the so-called electrum. Research carried out by the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) in the Artemision of Ephesus allows us today to date the beginning of this coinage to the middle of the 7th century BC. Since the coins are distributed into numerous series, whose sequence and allocation is often unclear, the cooperation of several disciplines is necessary to clarify the details. In a cooperation between the AG Numismatik of the Documenta Antiqua Dept. of the IKAnt (Dr. Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert) and the ÖAI, exactly this is being undertaken. The starting point is the excavation in the Artemision, where over 100 of these coins were found. They can be assigned to various time horizons based on the archaeological findings. Metal analyses increasingly show that the series were not uniformly alloyed but follow different standards. The weight standards also vary. Within the framework of this project dealing with the electrum coinage(s) of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, all parameters-stratigraphy, find mapping, metrology, metallurgy and die sequences-are taken into account for the first time.