Tokens and Social Life in Roman Imperial Italy

Tokens are under-utilised artefacts from the ancient world, but as everyday objects they were key in mediating human interactions. This book provides an accessible introduction to tokens from Roman Imperial Italy. It explores their role in the creation of imperial imagery, as well as what they can reveal about the numerous identities that existed in different communities within Rome and Ostia. It is clear that tokens carried imagery that was connected to the emotions and experiences of different festivals, and that they were designed to act upon their users to provoke particular reactions. Tokens bear many similarities to ancient Roman currency, but also possess important differences. The tokens of Roman Italy were objects used by a wide variety of groups for particular events or moments in time; their designs reveal experiences and individuals otherwise lost to history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Clare Rowan is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. Her previous books, Under Divine Auspices: Divine Ideology and the Visualisation of Imperial Power (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and From Caesar to Augustus: Using Coins as Sources (Cambridge University Press, 2018), have demonstrated the enormous potential of coin evidence for understanding the Roman world. She held a European Research Starting Grant, entitled Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean, from 2016 to 2021, and this volume represents the findings of this work. She is currently the ancient editor for the Numismatic Chronicle.