In this revisionist history of the development of the modern monetary system, Desan argues that money effectively creates economic activity rather than emerging from it. Her account demonstrates that money's design has been a project central to governance and formative to markets.

Reading Medieval Sources is an exciting new series which leads scholars and students into some of the most challenging and rewarding sources from the European Middle Ages, and introduces the most important approaches to understanding them. Written by an international team of twelve leading scholars, this volume Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages presents a set of fresh and insightful perspectives that demonstrate the rich potential of this source material to all scholars of medieval history and culture. It includes coverage of major developments in monetary history, set into their economic and political context, as well as innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives that address money and coinage in relation to archaeology, anthropology and medieval literature. Contributors are Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, Elizabeth Edwards, Gaspar Feliu, Anna Gannon, Richard Kelleher, Bill Maurer, Nick Mayhew, Rory Naismith, Philipp Robinson Rössner, Alessia Rovelli, Lucia Travaini, and Andrew Woods.

Drawing upon field studies conducted in 1978, 1980 and 2001 with the Oksapmin, a remote Papua New Guinea group, Geoffrey B. Saxe traces the emergence of new forms of numerical representations and ideas in the social history of the community. In traditional life, the Oksapmin used a counting system that makes use of twenty-seven parts of the body; there is no evidence that the group used arithmetic in prehistory. As practices of economic exchange and schooling have shifted, children and adults unwittingly reproduced and altered the system in order to solve new kinds of numerical and arithmetical problems, a process that has led to new forms of collective representations in the community. While Dr Saxe's focus is on the Oksapmin, the insights and general framework he provides are useful for understanding shifting representational forms and emerging cognitive functions in any human community.

"Money may seem hopelessly mundane and culturally meaningless, but it has dominated--and documented--world history since the time of the ancient Greeks. This heavily illustrated book provides a spirited account of the first coinages and their living descendants in our pockets and purses. It explains how people from Jesus to The Beatles have used numismatics to explore the social, political, economic, and religious history of the world"--

When Charlie brings a box of his grandpa’s old coins to school, his classmates want to learn all about collecting coins and other currency. Join them as they learn how the idea of money started and the strange things people used before they invented metal coins and paper bills. Find out how coins are made, what secrets can be found on a dollar bill, and how to start your own coin collection. Meanwhile, you’ll learn some fascinating facts about the history and culture of currency from countries all over the world. With this book, you’ll be well on your way to being a knowledgeable numismatist.

There are many books that discuss the coins from specific periods of Egyptian history, but there are none that consider the coins from the whole of that history. This work aims to provide such an account, covering the currency from ancient times through the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and Ottoman periods to modern times. An important feature of the work is the illustration of a selection of about 150 coins and banknotes that represent the major types throughout that history. Adjunct to this selection of these illustrations is a “key” that provides further numismatic detail about each of the coins in it. A difficulty with Egyptian coinage is that it includes inscriptions in many languages. Some notes in the key to the coins and in the appendices are provided to give a little help in this. In addition to providing a chronological account of the currency, the coins and notes are related to aspects of the daily lives of the people of each period and also to some aspects of the development of the state, particularly its architecture.