Ancient Greek Weights as Artefacts: Economic and Anthropological Approaches
(2025) Oikonomia Seminar 2024–2025: “Economic exchanges” — Location: Online (24.April.2025)
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- Abstract
- (en) Historical metrology has developed considerably in recent decades, partly through the collection and standardisation of data (e.g. the Pondera Online project) and partly through the re-examination of market instruments (weights, measures and currencies) from an economic and anthropological perspective. On the one hand, ancient weights and measures, like coins, played a crucial role in the currency of ancient Greek economies, which has not been sufficiently taken into account. Since weights (standard of mass), measures (standard of volume) and coins (standard of value) are closely linked in daily trade, these instruments must be studied together, not only from the point of view of historical metrology, but also from the perspective of trade archaeology and economic history. On the other hand, historical anthropology has never focused on ancient Greek weights and measures, although it has been successfully applied to Greek coinage. To fill this gap, the branch of historical anthropology devoted to the study of value and exchange is very promising, allowing the study of the “social life” of artefacts from their production to their destruction. After reviewing the history of the discipline and its main current trends, I will present several case studies that illustrate the interest of applying economic and anthropological approaches to this often neglected material.
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Doyen, C. (2025). Ancient Greek Weights as Artefacts: Economic and Anthropological Approaches. Oikonomia Seminar 2024–2025: “Economic exchanges”, Online. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/243606