Of relevance to the general consideration of imitating
types across various Greek city states....
"Interpretation and Imitation of Classical Greek Coin
Types"
MARBURGER BEITRÄGE ZUR ANTIKEN HANDELS-, WIRTSCHAFTS- UND SOZIALGESCHICHTE, 2010
Robert Weir
The present article explores the use of diagnostic
types in the interpretation of Classical Greek coin
types. Whereas it is not always possible to say definitively whether given coin
types may have
had economic significance, political significance, both, or something else entirely for their recipients, the study of large numbers of coins, whether on the market, in public
collections, or in
hoards yields useful results. Investigation reveals that there was a large degree of coherence in the sorts of
types employed by dozens of the most important issuing authorities of the Classical world. Any notion that the Classical period was a Wild
West free-for-all of largely interchangeable and meaningless
types now seems improbable. The common perception of extreme
type flux before Alexander is mistaken, probably because scholars hitherto gathered their data and impressions from
museum collections, whose acquisitions naturally tend towards new varieties, the unusual, and the unique, at the expense of the run-of-the-mill that in fact made up the
bulk of coins in
antiquity and the majority of the material on the market today. The Hellenistic centuries did indeed see a further standardization and limitation of what poleis put on their coins, but the process
had its inception with the arrival of coined
money in European
Greece, circa 550 BC, not in the carnage of Chaeronea. The copying of well-known diagnostic
types by other issuing authorities raises the question of intentionality, and this paper will explore two possible explanations for a close imitation of Athenian coin iconography. This article is not concerned with the widespread and multifaceted phenomenon of coin forgery for economic reasons (one thinks here especially of
plated fourrées, or of the good-silver copies of Athenian owls made in the ancient Near East), since this has been well discussed already, but with the extent and semiotics of image appropriation on Classical Greek coinage.
Publication Date: 2010
Publication Name: MARBURGER BEITRÄGE ZUR ANTIKEN HANDELS-, WIRTSCHAFTS- UND SOZIALGESCHICHTE
https://www.academia.edu/39276162/_Interpretation_and_Imitation_of_Classical_Greek_Coin_Types_