Ethnic, cultural and civic identities in Ancient Coinage of the Southern Iberian Peninsula (3rd C. BC – 1st C. AD) (original) (raw)
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ANALYSING MONETARY CIRCULATION in the Visigothic period on the central Iberian Peninsula has traditionally drawn on physical data, such as the gradual decline in weight of the tremisses, their lower gold assay, and the apparent reduction of money in circulation. Such changes are argued to signal a major crisis in the Visigothic state. In recent years, increasing numbers of coin finds from the Iberian Peninsula have appeared on the antiquities market, leading to a significant increase in the numbers of known tremisses — the only coin minted by the Visigothic state in the 7th and 8th centuries. Few finds have been discussed in terms of their archaeological and stratigraphic context. This paper responds by examining known and new coin finds retrieved from the vicinity of the capital of Toledo, giving close consideration to their archaeological and stratigraphic context. By analysing these finds, new perspectives are gained on patterns of monetary circulation in the 7th to 8th centuries.
2018
EDIZIONI QUASAR e s t r a t t o Giacomo Pardini, Nicola Parise, Flavia Marani (a cura di), Numismatica e archeologia. Monete, stratigrafie e contesti. Dati a confronto. Workshop Internazionale di Numismatica (WIN) ISBN 978-88-7140-809-5 (seconda edizione) © Roma 2018, Edizioni Quasar di Severino Tognon srl via Ajaccio, 43 -00198 Roma -tel. 0685358444 fax 0685833591 e-mail: qn@edizioniquasar.it -www.edizioniquasar.it Volume stampato con il contributo di Progetto grafico della copertina Mirella Serlorenzi, Federica Lamonaca, Cecilia Parolini, Giacomo Pardini, Massimo Cibelli Progetto grafico e impaginazione Marco Tortelli Ottimizzazione Massimo Cibelli
A re-evaluation of how ethnicity is currently understood in archaeology is necessary in view of recent developments in the archaeology of identity. In this article, it will be argued that nationalism has led to an understanding of ethnicity as monolithic, denying in this way its heterogeneous nature. Since the 1920s, archaeologists working under the culture-historical umbrella have explicitly defined ethnicity on the basis of material culture, maintaining endless, and perhaps fruitless, debates. However, as anthropologists have been discussing since the 1970s, ethnicity is perhaps not about material culture, or not necessarily about material culture, but about perception. Archaeologists should consider ethnic identities as fluid and polymorphous, for multiple ethnic affiliations can coexist and overlap in the same individual. Ethnic identification(s) displayed by each individual will change depending on the circumstances, the interlocutor and the situation. In addition, archaeologists cannot study ethnic identity in isolation from other types of identifications -gender, religion, status, etc. -as all of them will be at play, ready to act (or to be hidden), on each particular occasion. These issues will be discussed in this article in relation to Iron Age Iberians.
The Northwest Iberian Peninsula is not a uniform region. Geographers have divided it into two main biogeographic sub-regions: Atlantic and Mediterranean, each with its own characteristics, in terms of geomorphology and climate. The perception that these two sub-regions have distinct identities since, at least, the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE, i.e. since the Chalcolithic period, has led us to analyse separately developments in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BCE, which is viewed as a key period for understanding the emergence of the Bronze Age. During the Early Bronze Age new settlement strategies emerged in the Atlantic sub-region, associated with the appearance of innovative pottery shapes and decorations, resettlement of high-altitude areas for burial in small cairns, circulation of new prestigious metallic icons, the emergence of new styles of rock art, such as engravings of dozens of halberds, the emergence of the phenomenon of structured depositions of metallic objects, such as the deposits of halberds, or halberds and daggers, and, consequently, new social relationships, new power structures and new places for negotiating social relations, which revealed significant structural changes compared to Chalcolithic communities. In the Mediterranean sub-region, despite new locations for certain settlements, changes seem to have occurred across a broader timeframe, including the abandonment of several community and ceremonial spaces-such as walled enclosures or shelters with collective depositions-, the emergence of metallic deposits, consisting of halberds, and the timid adoption of new iconographies in rock art. These are characterised by phenomena of continuity or social resistance, and reveal that, in this region, social changes and new scenarios of power or social aggregation occurred in a manner that differed from the Atlantic sub-region. On the basis of the analysed data it seems possible to hypothesise that, during the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BCE, together with the phenomena of social resistance and permeability to new developments, the Northwest Iberian Peninsula was subjected to multiple and distinct influences that spawned the development of a mosaic of societies, apparently united and standardised by generalised phenomena. The factors that contributed to this change were multiple and distinct in each of the two sub-regions. This includes important external factors, such as the climate conditions in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE and events that occurred during the second half of this millennium, that had distinct repercussions on the two sub-regions; greater or lesser permeability to Atlantic contacts; 'dismantling' of supra-regional exchange networks with southern regions, as a result of social upheavals in the Southern Mediterranean. In terms of internal factors, it is worth highlighting the capacity for resilience and adaptation to changes. Phenomena such as the migration of populations of Pontic-Caspian origin during the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, revealed by DNA studies of human remains from the South, Southeast, and Southwest Iberian Peninsula, are not proven for this region, and therefore will not be taken into account. Keywords: Northwest Iberian Peninsula, sub-regions, transition from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BCE, continuity or change?