VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT COINS OR MONEY ? EXPLORING THE MONETIZATION AND FUNCTIONS OF ROMAN COINAGE IN BELGIC GAUL AND LOWER GERMANY 50 BC-AD 450 ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. T. Sminia, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de faculteit der Letteren op dinsdag 28 november 2000 om 13.45 uur in het hoofdgebouw van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Joris Gerardus Aarts geboren te Nijmegen promotor: prof.dr. W.A. van Es Preface This book is the final result of a research programme that started in 1992. I started writing fairly soon after that, and I wrote it pretty much in the form and sequence which it has now. My ideas about the subject matter and the waysit should be tackled it have of course evolved a great deal since the beginning, and this evolution will be evident to the close reader, or even the not so close reader. In a sense, the book is the story of my struggle with archaeological numismatics, and I have not tried to eliminate this aspect from it. I cannot even say that I emerged as the unambiguous victor; but I have attempted to sweep the battlefield as clean as I was able to. It was a complex affair, and involved knowledge of not only the field of ancient numismatics itself, but also of ancient history, archaeology, economic anthropology and statistics. As a consequence, it will no doubt occasionally many specialists in these various disciplines, to whom I apologize beforehand. In the first chapter an introduction is presented in the aims and methods of the project. After this, two main issues in the discussion about the subject are examined, namely the nature of late Iron Age coinage and the Roman tax system. Chapter 2 is a general discussion of methodology, but certain aspects of it are to be found in later chapters where they were more relevant. The next three chapters offer an analysis of the coin finds of three selected areas: the Dutch river area, Luxemburg and Trier, and The Meuse-Demer-Scheldt area respectively. In chapter 6 the results of the three areas are compared, and some conclusions are drawn with regard to the functions of Roman money in the provinces of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior, of which the three areas form part. I have given much thought to the presentation of the coin data. Because the coin database is very large (35,636 records), a printed list of all coin finds was out of the question. They had to be summarized in some way. I have chosen to omit the coin finds of Luxemburg and Trier entirely, since they have been published excellently in the FMRL and FMRD. The coin finds of the other two areas are summarized -only numbers of coins are given per issue period, but every site is included. Because this will be insufficient in detail for some, a more comprehensive list (in which Luxemburg and Trier are also included) with issuing authority and denominations is made available on the Internet. It can be downloaded from the site of the Archeological Institute of the Free University of Amsterdam (www.let.vu.nl/arch/aivu/Startpagina.htm; the address may change, not the location of the file on the site of the Institute). If one does not like the Internet, the list can be obtained on CD-ROM from the author (email: [email protected]). However, in a few years the inventory of coin finds will be so outdated by the progressive numbers of detector finds that it would not be advisable to use this list as reference any longer. I owe thanks to many people without whose help I never could have written this book. I am grateful to Wim van Es, in particular for his endless patience and his continuing belief in the project in times of despair. I thank Richard Reece and Clive Orton for helping me find a usable method to evaluate the (dis)similarity between coin lists, avoiding at the same time the multiple comparison problem which it presents. I am also grateful to everyone else who made my stay at the Archaeological Institute of London an enjoyable one. I offer gratitude to Jos van der Vin and Johan van Heesch for supplying me with the data for the Dutch and Belgian parts of the study areas, and for the suggestions and comments they made during my stay in Leiden and Brussels. I would like to thank Jan Slofstra and Mik Lammers for reading the manuscript, their stimulating discussions and kind criticism. Also I express my gratitude to Jelle Prins; our sharing of research subjects as well as a room supplied me with many ideas and gave occasion to many a pleasant time. I am grateful to Harry Burgers for some of the drawing work that had to be done, and Bert Brouwenstijn for the design of the cover. Last but not least I want to thank my family; my father for correcting my English and Karen, Marein and Daan for putting up with a distraught husband and father at more times than I would have wished. This publication has also been made possible by the financial support of the Stichting Nederlands Museum voor Anthropologie en Praehistorie. III Preface to the online edition Because I still get requests for hard copies of my dissertation every year, and I have run out of them, I have decided to publish my dissertation online. There are very few changes compared to the first edition: I have not tried to actualize data, nor literature, since this would involve too much work. Some figures were digitally corrupted and had to be made anew (they will look more sophisticated and are in full colour, one of the blessings of online publication). The original digital data set, as mentioned in the previous preface, is no longer online. For an updated data set of the Netherlands, I refer to the online databases of PAN and NUMIS, which are publicly available. I hope readers will still find enough of value in the text and analyses of the original work. Joris Aarts, June 2020 IV Table of contents Preface ....................................................................................... III Preface to the online edition .................................................................... III Chapter 1 Introduction....................................................................... 1 1.1 Aims and background of the research project ............................................. 1 1.1.1 The concept of monetization . 1 1.1.2 The object of this study . 2 Limits in time and space . 3 Method...................................................................... 4 1.1.3 The historical background: some important topics. 4 1.2 The economic organisation before the coming of the Romans............................... 5 1.2.1 Celtic coinage in the Late Iron Age.. 6 The origins of Celtic coinage; reasons for minting and secondary usage . 6 The period 125-60 BC . 7 The impact of the Gallic wars . 8 Late Celtic issues and Roman money . 10 1.3 Taxation in the early Empire .......................................................... 10 1.3.1 The sources . 11 1.3.2 Roman taxation under the Principate . 11 From Caesar to Augustus . 12 The impact of the Roman tax-system. 13 Taxes and trade . 13 The impact of taxation in the western provinces; an attempt to an alternative approach . 15 Chapter 2 Methodology .................................................................... 19 2.1 The nature of coin finds ............................................................... 19 2.1.1 Identifying hoards and typology. 19 2.1.2 Dating hoards, hoard clusters and interpretation of hoards . 20 2.1.3 Site finds: sites and settlements . 21 2.2 The sense of statistics ................................................................ 22 2.2.1 Preparing the data . 23 2.2.2 Statistics and other numerical techniques . 24 Correlation analysis . 24 Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) tests. 25 Chronological profiles . 27 2.3 The art of representation .............................................................. 28 2.3.1 Chronological distribution of coins . 28 2.3.2 Notes on the maps . 28 Chapter 3: The coin finds of the Dutch river area. ............................................ 30 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 30 3.2 The physical geography of the area..................................................... 31 3.4 The inventory of the coin finds......................................................... 31 3.4.1 Find spots, find complexes and settlements . 31 3.4.2 The coins; identification and classification. 33 3.5 The analyses of the coin finds ......................................................... 35 V 3.5.1 Geographical distribution . 35 3.5.2 The statistical analyses . 42 Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) tests. 42 Correlation analysis . 43 Chronological profiles before AD 260 . 46 Chronological profiles AD 260-402 . 49 Evaluation of the test results. 49 3.6 Conclusion: the use of Roman coins in the Dutch river area from 50 BC -402 AD . 51 3.6.1 The period 50 BC - 69 AD. 51 Celtic coins . 51 Early Roman money . 54 3.6.2 The period 69-260 AD . 58 Denominations and coin use . 63 3.6.3 The late Roman period (AD260-402) . 65 Geographical distribution of coins and hoards . 66 Late Roman solidi . 67 Mints....................................................................... 69 Denominations. 69 Chapter 4 The coin finds of Luxemburg and Trier .......................................... 71 4.1 Selection of coin finds................................................................. 71 4.2 The sites.