248 Baker
the 19th century by the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
through the offices of Pavlos Lambros.40 The Chalkis coin hoard reveals the
longevity of torneselli and some other, much older, coinages, but contains also
contemporary issues of Cattaro and Campobasso. These hoards, in combina-
tion with some rare data from sites, show us that for much of the 15th cen-
tury the currency of Greece was constituted by older torneselli and tournois
issues, in combination with a few Ottoman coins, and some recent imports
from the Adriatic area. The issues from Campobasso, and maybe even from the
related mint of Limosano (both now in the Molise region), are plentiful and
typologically complex. The question of possible Greek imitations has yet to
be answered either way, but the relevance of coins of this type to Greece post-
dates the limits of this essay.
Medieval Greek Money in its Historical Context
The usage of money was a fundamental aspect to life in medieval Greece, its
quality and quantity being a direct reflection of economic realities. The money
supply is fundamental ingredient to any economic history.41 But money—and
specifically numismatic sources in the form of types and finds—can also be
used for other historiographical purposes, for instance to describe political and
colonial history, military conflicts, local or regional developments, or the rela-
tions between Greece and other territories.42
Beginning with the first concern, that of money supply and economic devel-
opments: in the absence of any official output figures for the medieval Greek
mints, or of any other documentary evidence for the size and quality of the
money supply, we rely largely on the numismatic data. These provide us with a
picture which is quite different to some of the narratives which have been put
forward in the historical and archaeological literature. The history of the Greek
peninsula since middle Byzantine times is usually subjected to some form of
40 Ormonde M. Dalton, “Mediaeval Personal Ornaments from Chalcis in the British and
Ashmolean Museums,” Archaeologia 62 (1911), 391–404.
41 For words to that effect, with respect to contemporary England, see Martin Allen, “The
Volume of the English Currency, 1158–1470,” Economic History Review 54.4 (2001), 595–611.
42 Some of these aspects are dealt with by the other authors of this volume, and also by
the contributors to the recent Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval
Peloponnese, ed. Sharon Gerstel (Washington dc, 2013). Notably, on the economy, there
are essays in both by David Jacoby. On the other hand, straight political, colonial, or mili-
tary treatments, potentially very relevant to monetary affairs, have been omitted from
these collections of essays.