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1 NUMISMATIC BASICS AND HOARD EVIDENCE THE EVIDENCE of coins can be used in several modes of analysis. One emphasizes the issues of a particular mint, whose coins reveal data about the circumstances of their issuance. The weight of coins can tell us about the standard that minters intended to embody, and this standard in turn may be revelatory about the coins of other mints that were meant to circulate in some conjunction with the issues in question. The fidelity of mints to underlying standards may be indicative of the presence of fiscal exigencies that could lead to underweight coins. Some underweight coining indicates value that government guarantees sought to add. Weight is also suggestive of wear, a factor witnessed by other physical qualities, all of which may provide material in two important areas, namely, the availability of newer coins and factors militating in favor of a coin being withdrawn from circulation by an ancient user. In addition, different denominations functioned in differing economic settings, so that the history of the range of denominations, or the relative proportions in emission between denominations, becomes significant. The iconography of coin types can speak directly to the political situation through its allusiveness, while other features of design-such as the names of officials, letter sequences, and other symbols-may also reflect the administration of minting. Coin types are works of artistic representation whose esthetics may be studied both for art historical conclusions and for implications as to chronology and sequencing of issues. Countermarks created by punches are additions to coins made after striking. Notoriously elusive in interpretation, countermarking implies the existence ofreviews and validations, which were memorialized in the countermarks, intended to affect the utilization of circulating coins. Individual coins are the products of application to metal blanks of fixed obverse (anvil) and reverse (punch) dies that bore the hammer's impact. When a pair of coins shares the same die, die links are established , the study of which provides invaluable hints about not only the order of issues but also the percentage of coins that has survived from specific emissions. That proportion then permits estimations of the monetary output for a series or even for an entire mint. Sometimes the materials used in coining were not blanks but already minted coins 22 CHAPTER 1: NUMISMATIC BASICSAND HOARD EVIDENCE (a process termed overstriking). Overstrikes offer information about the relationships of series and mints as well as hinting at mint administration. A second mode of analysis explores coin aggregations, which are commonly called hoards (without respect to the intention or motivation of those who accumulated, placed, or abandoned them). Studying the composition of hoards allows for a chronological juxtaposition of the products of different mints. Hoards naturally reflect current or past circulation but do not necessarily provide a direct indication ofthe coins in usage in the local economy. The rationale by which the hoarder included any coin in an assemblage may vary from an automatic incorporation of items in near proportion to their appearance in the local market. The reconstruction of such rationales is thoroughly speculative in nature. To portray the numismatic history of each city within the Athenian arkhiwould be a colossal task, one probably impossible based on the present data. It is, however, uncertain whether any significant results for our purposes would justify either an exhaustive exploration of the archaeological record of each ally or an art historical evaluation of every allied coin. The latter task is (in any case) seriously complicated by such influences as esthetic or patriotic conservatism and archaizing. Our purposes are best served by examining the way the allies used money and by trying to account for the major thresholds in mint activity: the beginnings, terminations, and suspensions of minting; changes in standards and in the denominations being struck; and other significant demarcations in the emissions of individual mints. We shall start from the evidence provided by the hoards and then consider allied mints as they are grouped by numismatic and monetary phenomena. It turns out that redating a few series of coins would not change the basic conclusions about monetary policy and the nature of the Coinage Decree to be reached below. Numismatists studying individual mints often account for changes in coining by relating them to political events. Such explanations seldom command much credence, because so little is usually known about the internal history of individual allied cities during the Attic hegemony. Moreover, an intrinsic flaw may lie at the heart of such "parochial" analysis because of...

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