BARTER AND NON-MONETISED EXCHANGE

Limited monetisation can take two obvious forms. One is pre-monetary exchange based on barter. The other is monetary deprivation, where the market-place expects money, but too little coin is available. Both phenomena seem to exist in the Roman world. Barter may be a survival from a premonetary era, or an indication of metal shortage, or a sign that although there was enough coin, the State was not concerned to distribute it efficiently. What seems clear in the Roman world is that where money was available, it was used. The wear-rate of low-denomination coin was quite high, even if by modern standards valuable coin wore out slowly and circulated slowly. The ready market for counterfeit coin vividly suggests that more money was needed than was actually circulating. Barter can be difficult to detect, and there is a strong likelihood that it was widespread in many less urbanised areas.

Some documents from a much earlier society give interesting insights into types of exchange characteristic of the pre-modern world. In the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which is further from the time of Augustus than Augustus is from today, payment in grain was specified for hiring oxen or farm-labourers. But silver was specified for paying surgeons, brickmakers and tailors. This showed a demarcation between a countryside which used exchange in kind, and non-rural occupations which used money or proto-money.