Gifts, Goods and Money: Comparing currency and circulation systems in past societies

Dirk Brandherm studied Archaeology, Classics and Social Anthropology at the universities of Münster, Edinburgh and Freiburg. Most of his work has been in European Bronze and Iron Age archaeology, with one focus on metalwork production and depositional practices. He currently holds a position of Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland.Elon Heymans studied archaeology at the University of Amsterdam and at Tel Aviv University. He completed his PhD in Tel Aviv on the early history of money in the eastern Mediterranean Iron Age, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University. His focus lies on the archaeology of Greece and the southern Levant, and he is particularly interested in the social, political and historical context of early money use.Daniela Hofmann has obtained her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently Junior Professor at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published extensively on funerary archaeology, as well as the figurines and domestic architecture of the central European Neolithic, but she is also interested in instances of structured deposition and in spheres of exchange.

• Introduction: comparing currency and circulation systems in past societies – by Dirk Brandherm, Elon Heymans and Daniela HofmannIndeterminacy and approximation in Mediterranean weight systems in the third and second millennia BC – by Nicola Ialongo, Agnese Vacca and Alessandro VanzettiWeight units and the transformation of value: approaching premonetary currency systems in the Nordic Bronze Age – by Lene MelheimHeads or tails: metal hoards from the Iron Age southern Levant – by Elon D. HeymansWeighing premonetary currency in the Iberian iron Age – by Thibaud PoigtOf warriors, chiefs and gold. Coinage and exchange in the late pre-Roman Iron Age – by David Wigg-WolfNew wealth from the Old World: glass, jet and mirrors in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century indigenous Caribbean – by Joanna OstapkowiczGifts of the gods — Objects of foreign origin in traditional exchange cycles in Palau – by Constanze Dupont