Coins in Rhodes

Coins in Rhodes: From the monetary reform of Anastasius I until the Ottoman conquest (498 – 1522) presents the Byzantine and medieval coins collected by Greek archaeologists in Rhodes over a period of more than sixty years. It includes lists of excavated land plots, stray finds, an illustrated catalogue of all the Byzantine and local coins up to 1309, and a representative sample of the Hospitaller petty coins as well as all the Western coins found. Hoard evidence helps sort various emissions and their dates between c. 1320 – c. 1420.

After a chapter introducing the reader to the archaeology of Rhodes, the nature of the material and the way it has been handled, the coins are set against the reconsidered backdrop of local history from 498 to 1522, tracing fluctuations in circulation and attempting to explore their significance. Particular care is taken over the transitional 13th century, when fragmentation of power in the region has made the scanty documentary evidence very hard to assess.

Different approaches have been applied, depending on the available evidence integral to the material and that available from other sources. The archaeology of Rhodes across ten centuries presents all the difficulties of disturbed stratigraphy and recycling of structures expected of an intensively used site. The work aspires to promote a way of dealing with quantities of finds from large-scale rescue excavation that will help other scholars date contexts more accurately and review or compare their own data from this or other sites.