Coin Finds from Villages in Palestine During the Late Roman and Byzantine Periods (A.D. 383-696/7): A Quantitative Examination of Monetary Distributions

Haim Gitler, David L. Weisburd

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

A survey of coin finds in Israel and Jordan was carried out with the prospect of building a data base of the coins dated to the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. The project covers those coins dated from AD 383 until the end of the Byzantine period in Palestine and Trans-Jordan. In order to collect this data, all the recorded coins from excavations in Israel, housed in the storerooms of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem were examined, in addition to published material from excavations in Israel and Jordan.The 78 sites chosen for this project included mainly small villages, however, for comparison several larger cities as well as main administrative centers were recorded. Those sites represented with fewer than 10 coins, relevant to the period under discussion, were discarded from the survey. A total of 15,236 coins which include single finds as well as bronze and gold hoards have been recorded in the database. This database can be used as a tool for comparisons such as: any given site with the total amount of coins found in Israel, comparing a site with other sites in the vicinity, or comparing one geographical area to another, etc. The coins from each site were tabulated by: the early and late year of the issue, the emperor, and the mint. The information from this table was transferred to a second table where we listed the number of coins per period; this enabled us consequently to calculate the number of coins per year. The presentation in the figures is normalized. The attribution to each year is divided by the total number of coins from a site and multiplied by 100 to give the value that represents the fraction of a coin appearing in a given year over the total, allowing us to compare sites with different numbers of coins.The creation of this database in Excel opens the opportunity to any scholar to use this data for their own research, and tabulate new excavations in the future.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLes Villages dans l’Empire byzantin (IVe-Xve siècle)
EditorsJacques Lefort, Cecile Morrisson, Jean-Pierre Sodini
PublisherP. Lethielleux
Pages539-552
ISBN (Print)9782283604618
StatePublished - 2005

Publication series

NameRéalités Byzantines
Volume11

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Coin Finds from Villages in Palestine During the Late Roman and Byzantine Periods (A.D. 383-696/7): A Quantitative Examination of Monetary Distributions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this