Unpublished Early Byzantine Bronze Balance Weights with Unit Marks in the Pera Museum (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Weights from the Ephesus Museum"
Gephyra 28 (2024), 137-194.
This article, part of the Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum (=CPAI) project, introduces 302 balance weights from the collection of the Ephesus Museum, located in Selçuk (Efes), İzmir. The majority of the weights are made of lead, with a smaller number made of bronze. Among these, 115 weights follow the Greek system, while 187 belong to the Roman system, of which some are classified as Byzantine weights. The find spots of these weights are primarily in and around Selçuk and nearby archaeological sites, providing important data for their provenance or attribution. Although some weights bear ethnics, most only feature unit marks; however, their find spots enable accurate attribution. The Roman system weights, especially the librae, range from the theoretical 12 unciae to as much as 25 unciae, indicating adjustments over time due to inflation and devaluation. Among the Byzantine weights, the glass ones, dating from the 5th to 7th centuries AD, are also notable for the monograms they bear. Additionally, a weight made from a coin dates to the 10th-11th centuries AD.
Balance Weights in the Collection of the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara
Anatolia Antiqua, 2016
- I would like to thank Melih Arslan, the ex-Director of the Museum who permitted me to study and publish the weights. I would also thank Zehra F. Taşkıran and Mehtap Türkmen who facilitated my work and helped me during my studies in the museum. Eight of the seventy-four weights in the present catalogue were published previously by M. Acara Eser (see Acara Eser 2009). 2) Lang 1964: pls. 3-7.
The Earliest Balance Weights in the West: Towards an Independent Metrology for Bronze Age Europe
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2018
Weighing devices are the earliest material correlates of the rational quantification of economic value, and they yield great potential in the study of trade in pre-literate societies. However, the knowledge of European Bronze Age metrology is still underdeveloped in comparison to Eastern Mediterranean regions, mostly due to the lack of a proper scientific debate. This paper introduces a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of standard weight-systems in pre-literate societies, and tests it on a large sample of potential balance weights distributed between Southern Italy and Central Europe during the Bronze Age (second–early first millennium bc). A set of experimental expectations is defined on the basis of comparisons with ancient texts, archaeological cases and modern behaviour. Concurrent typological, use-wear, statistical and contextual analyses allow to cross-check the evidence against the expectations, and to validate the balance-weight hypothesis for the sample under analysis. The paper urges a reappraisal of an independent weight metrology for Bronze Age Europe, based on adequate methodologies and a critical perspective.
Early Bronze Age balance weights from Tarsus, Alishar Höyük and other sites
Within my project of documenting the earliest evidence for weight metrology in the Aegean and Anatolia I was allowed to study possible balance weights in the Archaeological Museums of Ankara and Istanbul as well as in the excavation depot at Tarsus during September 2006 and September 2007. Here I would like to present the results of these investigations which form part of my studies on the earliest balance weights from the Aegean and Anatolia dating to the Early Bronze Age.
Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, 2019
The study departs from recent suggestions that locally produced balance weights from settlement sites in central Portugal, dated to the Final Bronze Age (1200-900) are based on a Late Bronze Age Syrian/Ugaritic metrological system (13th-12th c. BCE). These proposals have been based on the comparative studies of the weights of these Atlantic objects, but have not been examined rigorously in comparison with Near Eastern metrological systems, despite the claims they make. This has repercussions for the conclusions drawn so far. The present study has a threefold aim. First, it examines this hypothesis of a Syrian derivation of metrological systems underlying the local production of balance weights in Atlantic Iberian settlements (ca. 1200-900 BCE). Secondly, it investigates whether these local balance weights bear any metrological relationship to those balance weights of Phoenician typologies encountered in Atlantic Iberian sites of the colonial period (8th-6th c. BCE). Thirdly, taking as a case study the better documented evidence from Alcácer do Sal, it examines for the first time whether these metrological systems, in use for centuries in Atlantic Iberia, underlie the metrologies of the earliest, pre-Roman, locally-minted coinage, which follows Phoenician iconography but is struck using the syllabary of the indigenous languages, developed in the 8th c. BCE as an adaptation of the Phoenician script. The study suggests that the dating of the earliest group of balance weights needs to be lowered. In addition, it documents a likely derivation of the metrological system of coinage from the Phoenician milieu of Iberia, rather than the 3r dc. BCE Carthaginian metrologies, as advocated so far. This is supported by the metrological continuity between balance weights and coinage, and the latter's iconography, as the present study documents.
Weights and Marketplaces from the Bronze Age to the Early Modern Period, 2019
In this chapter we address the archaeological evidence for balance weights in pre-literate Bronze Age Europe (ca. 2300-800 BC, with the exception of the Aegean), as a proxy for the adoption of weight-based trade. The study is introduced by a theoretical and methodological framework for the identification of balance weights, in the absence of inscriptions and texts. The analyzed sample amounts to 566 potential balance weights, with a distribution covering most of continental Europe and major Islands. Five major formal types are identified. The statistical analyses support the identification for the sample under analysis, and suggest the existence of a “Pan-European” weight system. The results of the study show that weighing equipment, and hence weight-based trade, was widespread in Bronze Age Europe at least by the mid-2nd Millennium BC.
B A Hellenistic Scale Weight from ‘Akko. 'Atiqot 111,
A rare Hellenistic lead scale weight was retrieved from a Hellenistic-period accumulation layer (L121) excavated behind the moat counterscarp wall in the 'Akko Ottoman fortifications (see Gosker, this volume). 2 The well-preserved 'Akko Moat weight sheds new light on the iconography and metrology of a series of weights, as it is similar to a lead weight of the same series found underwater offshore from 'Atlit (Finkielsztejn 2016), and it exhibits some similar features to two other lead weights-one from an excavation at the 'Akko Post Office, and the other from the Moussaief Collection. The 'Akko Moat weight is described here, followed by a description of the three other weights, and a discussion on the dating and the metrology of the weights and the series, 3 and their historical context.