Monetary History

Money Matters: The Development of Money through the Ancient World. A four-part series that traces the development of economic systems in the ancient world and explore how money as a financial instrument has evolved over the millennia.

Money hasn’t always been currency or coin; it has actually existed in many different forms. Thousands of years ago, people used objects with trading values to act as “money”—things like rings, porcelain and even knives and axes. Here's a look at the Ancient and Unique Money exhibit at the St. Louis Fed Economy Museum.

The ANS's Greatest Coins series examines coins in the American Numismatic Society’s collection, carefully selected for their historical fame. In this episode ANS Chief Curator Dr. Peter van Alfen looks at the mystery of the beginnings of the Athenian “owl” coinage, one of the most widely used and widely circulating coinages of the ancient Greek world, which was introduced around the time that the Athenian democracy was formed after decades under the rule of the tyrant Peisistratus and his sons Hipparchus and Hippias

Dr. Lucia Carbone examines a sestertius of Nero depicting a detailed representation of the important harbor of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber.

"Cistophoric Mysteries Solved: The Contribution of the R B Witschonke Collection" by Lucia F. Carbone (American Numismatic Society)

ANS Member Mike Markowitz is back for Coins of the Crusades. Between 1096 and 1291, Western Europeans fought a series of wars against Muslims for control of the Holy Land. They created “Crusader States” that minted their own coinage which included debased silver, some copper small change, and rare gold imitations of contemporary Muslim dinars.

Dr. Aneurin Ellis-Evans presents his latest research on the coinage of the Troad in the Hellenistic period, discussing how, in the 2nd and 1st c. BC, the city of Alexandreia Troas in north-west Turkey produced a long-running silver coinage in the name of a local deity, Apollo Smintheus, who is first attested in the opening lines of Homer's Iliad. This talk presents work in progress on the wealth of new evidence we have for this series which sheds light on the history of Alexandreia Troas during the period of Rome's conquest of the Greek East.

Dr. Caroline Carrier (École normale supérieure de Lyon, caroline.carrier@ens-lyon.fr), Jérémy Artru (Orléans University, jeremy.artru@univ-orleans.fr) and Dr. Thomas Faucher (Centre d'Études Alexandrines, thomas.faucher@cea.com.eg) will present an ongoing project on Greek coins with observable traces, including overstrikes, brockages, and cracked flans. This study seeks to assess which process created these traces and what they reveal about coin production.

An educational video produced for the American Numismatic Society's exhibition "Drachmas, Doubloons and Dollars: The History of Money," which ran at the New York Federal Reserve from 2002 to 2012.

"Hidden power indeed: the surrogate coinages used by the Romans in Greece and Asia Minor" by François de Callataÿ (Royal Library of Belgium, Free University of Brussels).

Dr. Spencer Pope traces critical moments in the history of numismatics through coins from the Ancient World drawn exclusively from the McMaster Museum of Art's Bruce Brace Coin Collection at McMaster University.

This lecture was a part of the Coinage of the Roman Provinces before Provincial Coinage Conference on the the Richard B. Witschonke Collection—held from March 23–25, 2021, co-sponsored by the American Numismatic Society and the Ph.D. Program in History at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Join Associate Member Almoatz-bellah Elshahawi for this week’s Long Table on professional conservation and treatment of ancient coins. A Ph.D. candidate in archaeological conservation at Cairo University, Mr. Elshahawi specializes in ancient Egyptian metals and coins. Ancient coins are valuable sources of information for numismatists and historians when it comes to interpreting the past. Various methods are employed to preserve these objects from damage and corrosion. This presentation focuses specifically on the problems related to conserving and treating ancient bronze coins, including information on storage of these materials.

Join ANS Fellow and Roman specialist Ben Lee Damsky for an explanation of a mysteriousmedallion of Antoninus Pius. Authorities have disagreed as to the reverse figure, but the correct description improves our understanding of several other coin types, both Greek and Roman, and suggests the occasion for issuing the medallion.

ANS Chief Curator Dr. Peter van Alfen considers the various reasons that modern commentators suggest for the production of ancient coinage in general and Achaemenid royal coinage in particular. Drawing upon theoretical approaches in the fields of economics and political science, he proposes a framework for understanding the rationalities that lay behind ancient coin production beyond just state payments, especially those made for military purposes.

Chief Curator Dr. Peter Van Alfen discusses the implementation of digital database projects at the ANS.

Mr. Peter Van Alfen, American Numismatic Society, USA, “The challenges and details of large quantity coin finds,” at the International Meeting on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage Sites, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris (22-23 September 2016).

On November 8, 2019, Prof. Dr. Oğuz Tekin, received the American Numismatic Society's Archer M. Huntington Award in recognition of outstanding career contributions to numismatic scholarship. Following the presentation of the Award, Prof. Tekin delivered the Silvia Mani Hurter Memorial Lecture, entitled, "Markets, coins and weights in Hellenistic Asia Minor."

(In Turkish).

In the numismatic field at the end of Republic, there is an emphasis of abstract personifications of values in relation to the Roman state (res publica), in which we can observe the increased association of ideals to individuals and debates concerning the ownership of particular ethical qualities, which would become a core imperial virtue. Dr. Hannah Cornwell, Roman historian and lecturer at the University of Birmingham, will outline the role of traditional ideals in debates on the nature of the Roman state during the final disintegration of the Republican political system, as communicated via the coinage. The communication and contests over ownership of such ideals laid the foundations for a framework of Imperial ideals.

ouched as a bedtime story, this talk highlights the relationship between the political mythology of Seleucus I as recorded in ancient texts (Appian, Justin, Malalas) and the development of early Seleucid coinage, especially those related to the anchor, Apollo, and horned horse. This is followed by a discussion of the use and reuse of related types and stories by subsequent members of the Seleucid dynasty and successor states as a means of illustrating legitimacy. Treatment is also given to a developing conversation/negotiation of power visible on the coins between both the city and the Seleucid king and the influence of indigenous non-Greek peoples on the later coinage.

ANA Education Director Rod Gillis identifies some tips on giving successful numismatic presentations.

Panellists: Dr Andrew Meadows, series editor
Dr John Kroll, co-author of The Athenian Empire: Using Coins as Sources
Dr Liv Maria Yarrow, author of The Roman Republic to 49 BCE: Using Coins as Sources