Dear David and Board,
As Shawn noted, knowing what
ancient coins circulated during a particular time and place is a more complicated question, but I admire your boldness! It is a type of collecting theme that is regularly discussed on the "Colonial Coins"
Google Group involving, in their case, what was circulating in the US during its pre-Federal and Confederation periods. With the proper amount of research, you should indeed be able to feel out what was likely circulating in and around Pylus during the Classical and Hellenistic time periods. However, just like tracking down the coins themselves, it will take time and patience to know what to chase after.
It has already been suggested that you study up on
coin hoards, but as Pete (Akropolis) rightly pointed out, they do not provide the clearest windows to the "slice of life" past when only one is studied. Going a little further with this metaphor, if each
hoard is thought of as a windowpane in a large window, than a lot of panes are needed before a fuller (and hopefully clearer) picture can be put together. Remember, the
majority of ancient
coin hoards are not scoops of random pocket change, but are rather consciously or semi-consciously selected groups of coins often lacking certain
contemporary types and over representing others!
Archaeological excavation reports is another approach to getting the information you seek, David, but with a set of problems of its own. Coins found during excavations will usually be weak on the high
denomination types as those are the kinds that ancient users would have been very careful not to lose! Excavation reports are also often not the easiest kinds of literature to procure---and that's assuming the one(s) for a certain dig have been published! That said, you may want to pull on the sleeve of The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP) for some assistance:
https://classics.uc.edu/prap/I browsed through their site (which hasn't been updated in eleven years!) and came across a few coins mentioned (in passing) here and there in the documents. A very few (in mostly
poor condition and from different periods) are also illustrated in their online
catalog which, I am guessing, is only a sampling of what was found (consider the absence of the Venetian gold ducat mentioned in the 1998 Report to the Directorate of
Antiquities [Olympia]).
https://classics.uc.edu/prap/db/smallfindlist.php?site=&genmat=&specmat=&genform=&specform=CoinIt may be helpful, then, to take advantage of PRAP's willingness to answer inquiries for more information on this or that. Also, the name of Sebastian Heath rang a numismatic
bell.
http://numismatics.org/sebastianheath/He might be a
good person to ask about the coin finds!
Distancing ourselves from Pylos a
bit, I think it is
fair to say that the general types of coins circulating at that city during a given time were also probably being used by its close neighbors. Other archaeological reports from across the region of Messenia might be worthwhile considering as well.
In summary, I think a combination of documented single coin finds and
coin hoards found at or near Pylos is probably the way to go to answer your specific questions, David. For more general observations on the circulation of Greek coinage in the
Peloponnese, there might be a volume on that very topic, but nothing exactly
comes to mind.
Anyway, I
hope some of this helps and gives you some ideas on how to proceed.
Best regards,
Mark Fox
Michigan