December 15, 2016 – When coinage was invented, the city-states of ancient Greece adopted it swiftly and enthusiastically; by the late classical period coins were the universal medium for both internal and external trade. Non-Greeks adopted coinage more hesitantly if at all; but the Greeks continued to trade with their neighbors. The Greeks wrote little about the mechanisms of this trade: did the locals have special “trading posts”? Currencies that were used specially for trading with Greeks? Did Greek traders travel to the non-Greeks or the other way around? Did long-term relationships lead to the adoption of coinage by the non-Greeks? Many such questions can be asked.
The Greek settlements along the Black Sea littoral and their non-Greek hinterland offer a rich source of information for these questions, information that when brought together should provide insights relevant not only to the Black Sea but to all places where monetized societies deal with non-monetized neighbors. For this purpose the Israel Science Foundation has funded a workshop entitled ‘Money on the Margins: Coinage, Forms and Strategies of Intercultural Commerce on the Black Sea Shore in the Classical and Hellenistic Eras’, to take place on June 18-22, 2017, at Zichron Yaakov, Israel. The keynote speakers will be Alain Bresson, François de Callataÿ, and Sergei Monachov.
The Academic Organizing Committee is composed of David Schaps, Vladimir Stolba, and Ulrike Peter. The organizers invite contributions from numismatists, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and anyone else who can help shed light on the questions involved. Contributions from outside the chronological limits can also be considered. A limited number of travel grants may be offered, depending upon the total funds available. The workshop will be conducted in English. A volume of proceedings will hopefully be published after the conference.
Speakers should plan their talks to be about 20 minutes long. Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by January 15, 2017 to David Schaps. Notification as to acceptance can be expected by about the end of February. In cases where earlier notification is required, please let the organizers know and they will try to oblige.