Coinage and Society in Britain and Gaul: Some Current Problems

Description

Ten papers stem from a conference in October 1978. The first is on early Greek coinage (K. Rutter, 1-9), the second on the relation between coinage and state development in Central Gaul (D. Nash, 10-17). S. Scheers (18-23) deals with the origins of coinage in Belgic Gaul and its evolution after the Gallic War. R. Reece (24-28) has collected New Testament and other references which show how the Roman world used coinage, and discusses how fast the use of Roman coins spread from Rome. B. Cunliffe (29-39), discussing money and society in pre-Roman Britain, uses coin maps to demonstrate the shakey basis of historical assumptions for the period from 120 BC. J. P. C. Kent (40-42) examines the appearance of coinage in Britain with particular reference to interrelated political and economic events. The unsatisfactory data underlying all our coin maps are pointed to by W. Rodwell (43-52), analysing the Essex situation in detail. J. Collis (53-55) argues the virtues of socioeconomic versus historical approaches to coinage, insisting on the need for testable models; a response comes from Rodwell (56). Finally, C. Haselgrove and J. Collis (57-61) examine the need for and possibility of establishing a computer-based information retrieval scheme for Iron Age coins in Britain (9500 provenances), and a series of thirty-one maps shows the known distribution of coins by type at 1978.