Conveners
S88. EXONUMIA 2. COIN WEIGHTS & TOKENS
- Charles Doyen (UCLouvain / FNRS)
This paper will introduce a group of Roman coins repurposed in Islamic times through the use of countermarks. The practice of countermarking coins is normally associated with the appropriation and transformation by a different authority of coins already in circulation. The coins under analysis, however, struck between the second and fourth centuries AD, show very little sign of wear, thus...
Copper-alloy weights were used throughout the late medieval and Renaissance periods to control and monitor the circulation of gold coins, and their presence on archaeological sites offers a unique means of evaluating the nature and extent of gold circulation in places that otherwise lack gold coin finds. This paper uses more than 1000 finds of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century coin weights from...
The paper proposes an approach to modern monetary metrology through the study of Barcelona as a manufacturing center of scales to weigh currency. To this end, the unpublished documentation from the Farriols workshop in Barcelona, now kept in the Gabinet Numismàtic de Catalunya (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya), will be examined . The workshop and a shop were founded in the 18th century and...
In the 16th century, a unique system of control over priests’ participation in the masses was introduced in the Cathedral of Majorca. It consisted of one or several lead tokens that were handed at a precise moment of the rite, to be exchanged for currency at the end of the month. Although the system had been introduced at a troublesome time in the history of this Mediterranean island, its...
