Trapezites: An Ancient Currency Conversion Website: Difference between revisions

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* Giuseppe Castellano
* Giuseppe Castellano
==Description==
==Description==
[https://trapezites.com Trapezites] is the fruit of Giuseppe Castellano's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Engaged Scholar Initiative postdoctoral project. It is a currency conversion website that converts from one ancient currency to another, accompanied by information about purchasing power in antiquity. Coins are among the most widely distributed and most numerous elements of ancient material and visual culture in the Mediterranean world. Determining historical exchange rates and purchasing power is a notorious problem and requires the study of many different types of evidence. Users are able to rapidly access results that would otherwise require careful study of the literature. The nature of the evidence – literary, epigraphic, numismatic – is specified. This website can help the public understand ancient money and provide a serious research tool for archaeologists, numismatists, and Classicists.
[https://trapezites.com Trapezites] is the fruit of Giuseppe Castellano's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Engaged Scholar Initiative postdoctoral project. It is a currency conversion website that converts from one ancient currency to another, accompanied by information about purchasing power in antiquity. Coins are among the most widely distributed and most numerous elements of ancient material and visual culture in the Mediterranean world. Determining historical exchange rates and purchasing power is a notorious problem and requires the study of many different types of evidence. Users are able to rapidly access results that would otherwise require careful study of the literature. The nature of the evidence – literary, epigraphic, numismatic – is specified. Not only does [https://trapezites.com Trapezites] convert between currencies, but it also provides information on ancient purchasing power in order to contextualize the user’s experience and to give an additional sense of value and exchange in antiquity. This website can help the public understand ancient money and provide a serious research tool for archaeologists, numismatists, and Classicists. This project emerged from my dissertation on currency and cultural contact in Sicily and Tyrrhenian Italy, focusing on the Archaic to the Hellenistic/Republican period, so such data is heavily represented.


Most anyone who has travelled internationally has been forced to exchange money. This was the reality in the ancient world as well, in which a vast range of individual entities minted coins on a variety of regional standards, so that currency exchange, conversion, and the establishment of equivalencies between monetary systems were crucial to social, political, and economic interaction. Weight standards were fundamental to the development, spread, and function of ancient money and carried a great deal of cultural significance to the peoples involved (and still do: why else would the United States staunchly hold on to ounces and pounds when the vast majority of the world uses a logical and uniform metric system?). I am working to bring this knowledge and its implications to a wider audience.
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This website would not have been possible without the generous support and assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Engaged Scholar Initiative (ESI), Mr. Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Dean Mia Carter and the staff of the UT College of Liberal Arts and ESI: A Texas Model, Dr. Ethan Gruber, The UT Department of Classics and especially Professor Adam T. Rabinowitz, and finally Ms. Estella Sun, Mr. Rodrigo Villareal, and Mr. Stacy Vlasits of the UT Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS). I would also like to thank Professor Cristina Carusi, Mr. Caolán Mac An Aircinn, Mr. Colin MacCormack, Professor Alexander Mourelatos, Professor Andrew Riggsby, Professor Mariah Wade, Mr. David Welch, and all the others who provided feedback and supported me in this project.

Latest revision as of 17:18, 18 September 2021

Available

  • Trapezites: An Ancient Currency Conversion Website

Author/Editor

  • Giuseppe Castellano

Description

Trapezites is the fruit of Giuseppe Castellano's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Engaged Scholar Initiative postdoctoral project. It is a currency conversion website that converts from one ancient currency to another, accompanied by information about purchasing power in antiquity. Coins are among the most widely distributed and most numerous elements of ancient material and visual culture in the Mediterranean world. Determining historical exchange rates and purchasing power is a notorious problem and requires the study of many different types of evidence. Users are able to rapidly access results that would otherwise require careful study of the literature. The nature of the evidence – literary, epigraphic, numismatic – is specified. Not only does Trapezites convert between currencies, but it also provides information on ancient purchasing power in order to contextualize the user’s experience and to give an additional sense of value and exchange in antiquity. This website can help the public understand ancient money and provide a serious research tool for archaeologists, numismatists, and Classicists. This project emerged from my dissertation on currency and cultural contact in Sicily and Tyrrhenian Italy, focusing on the Archaic to the Hellenistic/Republican period, so such data is heavily represented.

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