Small monetiform objects in Roman Sicily: tokens and local cults
Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterraneanis an ongoing research project, funded by the European Research Council and carried out by the University of Warwick. The project seeks to assess the production of monetiform objects (the so-called tesserae or tokens) and their role in ancient societies. This is a subject which has been previously neglected by scholars and needs further investigations.
As a Research Fellow within the project, my role is to analyse the production of tokens in Hellenistic and Roman Sicily, studying sets of finds ‘rediscovered’ in Sicilian museums. The scope of my talk is to outline the results of my research, presenting a selection of case studies relevant to the Palermo and Messina provinces, assessing archaeological, iconographic, numismatic and historical sources at the same time. In particular, such data help us to better understand local religion, cults, traditions and civic life in the provincia Sicilia.