Coins and Economy in Magdala/Taricheae

On a monetary basis, Magdala must be considered as one of the most important and active settlements between the 1st century BC and most of the 3rd century AD on Lake Kinneret, a place of production and trade, of supply for military forces, certainly in contact with other trading centres, probably located on the Mediterranean coast, however in a 'market' perspective quite different from our current experience and even from the semantic content of this word, often abused with a semantic extension that does not correspond to the experience of the ancients. Its monetary decline started on the early 4th century, when the economic and monetary strategies of the Constantinian era shifted the flow of money to other routes, especially between the great port cities of the Mediterranean.

The welcome contribution of Callegher's study derives from the new data published, which allows us to overcome "clichés" and a stereotypical view of both the archaeological site and the economy of the Upper Galilee.



Bruno Callegher is Full Professor on Numismatic and Monetary History at the University of Trieste.