In the first third of his paper, Joris Aarts offers an elegant and stimulating review of the ideas that have underpinned our interpretation of coinage and exchange in the Roman world for the past 30 years. In the central section, he outlines a possible alternative approach to analysing Roman coinage, drawing on research in economic anthropology and on the role of money in the Greek world. The final part of the paper discusses ways in which this cultural-economic perspective might be applied, primarily using evidence from northern Gaul.