Were faraway Byzantine provincial coins good elsewhere?

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

I've always wondered, would AE's of places like Carthage, Sicily, Ravenna, and Rome be good in Constantinople? Thessalonica and Antioch often turn up in faraway eastern Byzantine locations.  What about the other way around?

It's probably unlikely that many from Rome or Ravenna would have traveled east, for other than papal delegations, I can't think of many exports from an isolated enclave.

Presumably AV of good weight and metal would be accepted.  The coins of Sicily were generally well-made and Constans II temporarily parked the capital there, so one would think there would be more activity.  Carthage and Sicily were grain producers in Roman times, so I'd assume they were in Byzantine times, after the loss of Egypt.

[Troyden]

53 minutes ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

I've always wondered, would AE's of places like Carthage, Sicily, Ravenna, and Rome be good in Constantinople? Thessalonica and Antioch often turn up in faraway eastern Byzantine locations.  What about the other way around?

It's probably unlikely that many from Rome or Ravenna would have traveled east, for other than papal delegations, I can't think of many exports from an isolated enclave.

Presumably AV of good weight and metal would be accepted.  The coins of Sicily were generally well-made and Constans II temporarily parked the capital there, so one would think there would be more activity.  Carthage and Sicily were grain producers in Roman times, so I'd assume they were in Byzantine times, after the loss of Egypt.

 

I don't think we have enough sources to say either way with any certainty.

However, the fact that Constantinopolean follises were counterstamped in Sicily and the relative scarcity of finds of regional coinage outside of their places or origin may suggest that the Empire operated as a collective of closed monetary systems. The fact that after Justinian's reconquest the empire consisted of a few disjointed land blocks might have encouraged this tendency. A trader or traveler from one part could've been required to have their coins exchanged or counterstamped when entering another province.

[kevikens]

Bronze coinage issued by official Roman mints are found all over the Empire, far from where they were minted and seem to have been accepted all over the Empire whereas bronze coins' issued by provincial mints with koinon status did not normally circulate that far from the issuing mint and were probably accepted only at a discount, if at all. Coins with intrinsic value, gold and silver, circulated everywhere because their value came from the metal itself and did not need some kind of legal sanction to have commercial value. Roman, Byzantine and Arab silver coins are not at all unusual in Medieval Scandanavian finds, their bronze counterparts, not so much.