From the title, a reader might be forgiven for assuming that Coining values is a volume focused on economic transitions between the late Roman and early medieval worlds; it is not. Rather, it is a stimulating engagement of the roles of metal artefacts and coins in changing socioeconomic conditions. The publication arose from a conference held in Bonn in October 2023, and Anna Flückiger and Jan Bemmann are to be congratulated on the rapid production of an insightful volume full of punchy contributions that are sure to arouse the interests of archaeologists and historians of late antiquity and early medieval Europe. The central research question integrated across all contributions considers what role bronze and base-metal goods and materials played in late and post-Roman societies of the (former) Western Roman Empire. The Introduction by the editors makes a concise and compelling case for the need for this volume and establishes a clear research agenda in two pages, launching the reader deeper into the volume. The book is separated into two sections consisting of five contributions of conceptual overviews and nine contributions of largely geographic case studies. A strong combination of good editing and contributor ‘buy-in’ to the central research question has resulted in a number of complementary chapters that remain distinct yet still generate a strongly unified work.
The five contributions in the overviews section establish key economic concepts and practices across different media and socioeconomic behaviours that build upon each other and underpin the later thematic studies. Fleur Kemmers begins with a stimulating discussion about the paramonetary use of metals in late Republican Italy, when a monetised and coin-using economy was already in operation. Ralph Mathisen follows with a useful overview of textual references to base metals, their uses and values and the interpretations of these sources. Anna Flückiger introduces the concept of ‘Hackbronze’ (where pieces of bronze had paramonetary use, like the well-known ‘Hacksilber’), her arguments are convincing, but made more enticing in the foundations laid by Kemmers and Mathisen. David Wigg-Wolf crucially outlines how the collapse of a coin-using economy should not be conflated with more general economic collapse, and Fraser Hunter’s contribution highlights the complexities of economic behaviours underscored in previous chapters through insights provided via a range of detailed analyses of ‘Hacksilber’ (scrap silver). Across these five contributions, meticulous evidence from a number of geographically and archaeologically diverse sites are employed to induce strong insights into late antique socioeconomic behaviours and—more importantly—new understandings of data found across the former Roman world.
The nine case studies vary in scale from site (e.g. Marcus Zagerman at Höhensiedlung, San Martino; Eckhard Wirbelauer at Niedernai) to city (e.g. Giulia Bison at Rome; Alessandro Bona at Milan) to region (Rahel Otte for the Rhineland; Holger Komnick for Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony; Anna Zapolska for the West Baltic; Ellen Swift for Britain), with a final case study of methodological analysis provided by Peter Bray for the REMADE (Roman and Early Medieval Alloys Defined) project. Regardless of the scale of analysis for each case study, detailed information supported by high-quality illustration is found in each. Though no individual author touches upon all the themes found in the thematic contributions, each case study clearly elucidates one or more of the processes indicated in the first section and adds further nuance and detail.
The book is well produced, printed on good-quality paper to a high standard with excellent reproduction of full-colour images. Eleven chapters are written in English, with three in German, but the distribution of the case studies draws on a range of international scholarship across many languages. This reviewer did not identify any typographic errors—indicative of both the quality of editing and production as well as engaging content—and perhaps the only shortcoming of the volume is an absence of an index. An index would be useful when returning to the volume to find a specific reference, but there is considerable complementarity across all the contributions that cannot be captured by indexing alone.
There are several other key aspects to highlight. First and foremost, the primary data examined across all the contributions can generally be described as numismatic or metallic small finds, but this information is employed in stimulating ways, often incorporating a good level of site-based contextual analysis and positioned clearly within wider debates. Second, this volume is fundamentally a best-practice example of material culture studies for any period, and not only late antiquity. The range of objects and geographies from which the data are drawn and the consistent high-level, thematic interpretation provides the essential underpinning complementarity that makes this volume more than the sum of its parts. It is highly recommended that readers engage with as many contributions in the volume as possible, avoiding the temptation to read only those contributions related directly to their specialism. The two main justifications for this opinion are that: illustrated objects, models and graphics in one chapter (e.g. Otte’s fig. 11) apply to a number of other contributions in the volume; and the detailed data from each case study are often presented in complementary and readily comparable formats, so the reader can rapidly identify regional differences and concordances. In this regard, the volume provides a strong presentation of discrete case studies, while still achieving a more synthetic offering.
To better frame reader expectations, though, the contributions do not offer a critical deconstruction of current models of economic understanding of the Roman Empire or its western successors; there is no contribution that engages a textual source or archaeological site or hoard in (excruciating) detail; there are no object biographies. The balance achieved in thorough use of data to address bigger-issue understandings of socioeconomic practice is the aim of each chapter; and those aims are very well accomplished. The consistent integration of social perception and practice rather than a misleading segregation of purely ‘economic’ data is to be applauded, and (without ever explicitly saying so) it highlights the potential pitfalls of basing understanding of the late Roman and early medieval economic relations on a single form of material goods alone, such as coins or ceramics.
The volume is truly excellent and highlights a gap in knowledge that arguably has not even been apparent to many specialists of the period. The contributions are fresh and there are many novelties of interpretation that push beyond some more widely published and generic accounts of socioeconomic relations in late antiquity.
