E-Book Overview
This volume catalogues over 16,577 identifiable Greek coins produced by the excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens between 1931 and 1990. The majority of the coins found and catalogued are Athenian bronze, from the 4th century B.C. through the 3rd century A.D. Included as well are the Athenian silver and the hundreds of non-Athenian gold, silver, and bronze coins that made their way into the Agora in antiquity Considerable attention is paid to the archaeological context of the coins and to presenting a pictorial record of the Greek coinage from the Agora, with more than 1,035 coins illustrated. Substantial introductory discussions place all the coins in clear historical and numismatic contexts and give a sense of the range of international commercial activity in the ancient city. This comprehensive reference work is indispensable for students and scholars of Greek coinage and history. Presenting a reliable chronology of Athens' bronze coinage for the first time, it will be the standard reference for this important coinage in particular for years to come.
E-Book Content
THE
AGORA ATHENIAN RESULTS
OF EXCAVATIONS
CONDUCTED THE AMERICAN
SCHOOL
BY
OF CLASSICAL
STUDIES
AT ATHENS
VOLUMEXXVI
THE
GREEK
COINS
BY
JOHN H. KROLL with contributionsby ALAN S. WALKER
THE AMERICAN
SCHOOL
OF CLASSICAL
PRINCETON,
STUDIES
NEW JERSEY 1993
AT ATHENS
Data Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Pliiciation Kroll,John H., 1938The Greek Coins / byJohn H. Kroll; with contributionsby Alan S. Walker. cm. - (AthenianAgora; v. 26) p. Includesbibliographicalreferencesand index. ISBN 0-87661-226-5 1. Coins, Greek-Greece-Athens. 2. Coins, Greek. 3. Agora (Athens, Greece) 4. Athens (Greece)-Antiquities. I. Walker,Alan S. II. Title. III. Series DF287.A23A5 vol. 26 93-33146 [CJ459.A8] CIP 737.4938'5-dc20
? AmericanSchool of ClassicalStudiesat Athens 1993 TYPOGRAPHY BY THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES PUBLICATIONS OFFICE
C/O INSTITUTEFOR ADVANCEDSTUDY,PRINCETON,NEWJERSEY PLATES BY THE STINEHOUR PRESS, LUNENBURG, VERMONT PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE JOHN D. LUCAS PRINTING COMPANY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
To
THE MEMORY OF
MARGARET THOMPSON
PREFACE the FOLLOWING UPON TheAthenian Agora,VolumesII and IX, MargaretThompson'sCoinsfrom Period(1954), and George Miles' TheIslamicCoins(1962), the present Romanthrough the Venetian series. volumebringsto a conclusionthe publicationof coins in TheAthenian Agora,ResultsofExcavations Publicationof the Greek coins was initiallyentrustedto Josephine P. Shear; but after writing three preparatoryarticlesin the 1930's she was unableto makefurtherheadway,and the projectlapsedfor severaldecades. With the resumptionof large-scaleexcavationsin the Agora in 1970, responsibility for the Greek material was reassignedto me, excavationnumismatistfrom 1970 through 1973. I in turn enlisted the assistanceof my two successorsat the Agora, FredKleiner and Alan Walker. Our first task was to establish a reliable frameworkfor the chronology of Athenian bronze coinage, to which all but 13 percent of the Agora Greek coins belong. My initial papers focused on Athenian bronze coinage of the Roman period and of the 4th and early 3rd centuriesB.C. Kleiner, who elected not to participate in the final publication, devoted a series of articles to the bronze coinage of the 2nd and early st centuriesB.C. Walkerspecializedin the Athenian imperialbronze coins from the Agora, making them the subject of his 1980 Ph.D. dissertation.For this project he went through the entire inventoryof over 3,400 Athenian imperialbronzes to verify or correct the identificationsthat had been made