暴君、民主派与雅典最早的银质“猫头鹰”硬币

Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens.

作者信息

Davis Gillan, Blichert-Toft Janne, Gentelli Liesel, Albarède Francis

机构信息

Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Australia.

Australian Catholic University, Tenison Woods House, 8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia.

出版信息

Archaeol Anthropol Sci. 2025;17(6):122. doi: 10.1007/s12520-025-02229-z. Epub 2025 May 9.

DOI:10.1007/s12520-025-02229-z

PMID:40352807

原文链接:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12064638/

Abstract

UNLABELLED

Late in the sixth century BCE, the ancient Athenians overthrew the previous tyrant rulers and adopted a new democratic form of government militarily establishing themselves as a regional power. They constructed a fleet which played a crucial role in defeating the Persian invasion of 480/79 BCE and led to their creation of a naval-based empire. A key funding source for the ships was silver from the domestic mines at Lavrion situated in the south-east corner of Attica (Hdt. 7.144; . 22.7). The current consensus based on earlier metal analysis is that the Athenians must have found and exploited the rich, so-called 'third contact' silver mines in 520-515 BCE, a discovery that led to the introduction of the larger tetradrachm monetary unit (Kraay, 1956) and the iconic 'owl' coin 'type' (Picard, 2001) as a branded medium for exporting silver. Here, we present new lead isotopic and elemental abundance data for 52 archaic Athenian owls (pre-479 BCE) combined with previously published legacy data for 12 other owls. The results show that only a small proportion of the coins were wholly struck from Lavrion ore or other discrete sources while most of the coins were struck from Lavrion ore mixed with ore from a single or homogeneous, geologically older source. Crucially, this was not the multitude of external sources used for the preceding series. We deduce that the discovery of the third contact only occurred shortly before 483/2 BCE, precisely as claimed in the literary sources, at which point Lavrion silver came to represent the bulk of the supply. This forces a reappraisal of the current paradigm since it seems that there was no abrupt and complete change of ore source to Lavrion, and therefore this cannot be connected with the introduction of the owl coin type. It also impacts our understanding of the very low gold content of Athenian owls compared with the earlier series, which should be attributed to the replacement of ore sources.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12520-025-02229-z.

摘要

未标注

公元前6世纪晚期，古雅典人推翻了先前的暴君统治，采用了新的民主政府形式，并通过军事手段确立了自己作为地区强国的地位。他们建造了一支舰队，这支舰队在击败公元前480/79年的波斯入侵中发挥了关键作用，并促成了他们以海军为基础的帝国的建立。建造这些船只的一个关键资金来源是位于阿提卡东南角拉夫里翁的国内银矿的白银（希罗多德《历史》7.144；修昔底德《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》22.7）。基于早期金属分析的当前共识是，雅典人肯定在公元前520 - 515年发现并开采了丰富的所谓“第三次接触”银矿，这一发现导致了更大的四德拉克马货币单位的引入（克雷，1956年）以及标志性的“猫头鹰”硬币“类型”的出现（皮卡德，2001年），作为出口白银的一种品牌媒介。在此，我们展示了52枚古风时期雅典猫头鹰硬币（公元前479年之前）的新的铅同位素和元素丰度数据，并结合了之前发表的其他12枚猫头鹰硬币的遗留数据。结果表明，只有一小部分硬币完全由拉夫里翁矿石或其他离散来源铸造，而大多数硬币是由拉夫里翁矿石与来自单一或同质的、地质年代更古老来源的矿石混合铸造的。至关重要的是，这并非之前系列所使用的众多外部来源。我们推断，第三次接触的发现仅在公元前483/2年之前不久才发生，正如文献资料中所声称的那样，此时拉夫里翁白银开始代表大部分供应。这迫使对当前范式进行重新评估，因为似乎矿石来源并没有突然完全转变为拉夫里翁的，因此这与猫头鹰硬币类型的引入没有关联。这也影响了我们对雅典猫头鹰硬币与早期系列相比黄金含量极低的理解，这应该归因于矿石来源的更替。