Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Abbreviations
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction
- SECTION I ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
- SECTION II FINANCE
- SECTION III COINAGE (CIRCULATION)
- SECTION IV COINAGE (PRODUCTION)
- Preliminary observations, future directions
- Bibliographies
- Key to plates
- Indexes
- Plate section
Preliminary observations, future directions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Abbreviations
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction
- SECTION I ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
- SECTION II FINANCE
- SECTION III COINAGE (CIRCULATION)
- SECTION IV COINAGE (PRODUCTION)
- Preliminary observations, future directions
- Bibliographies
- Key to plates
- Indexes
- Plate section
Summary
It is time to pause, and to consider, both what – if anything – has so far been achieved, and what yet remains to be done. It may at this stage be thought that a disproportionate amount of time, energy and space has been expended for the gain of remarkably little ground, in the form of the establishment and collation of a number of additional facts, and the elucidation of a few basic principles or patterns, only. This remains to be seen, but in any case it is to a certain extent inevitable, and in the nature of the matter. For it is, of course, exceedingly difficult indeed to recover the smallest and simplest principle or pattern from even an enormous number of raw historical facts, and this is the case when such facts are as plentiful as can be desired, let alone when they are nowhere near so. On the other hand such a recovery is perhaps one degree easier, and is certainly at least one degree surer, when using the widest possible spread of different classes of evidence, than when using one class only, as when recovering monetary principles or patterns from what is basically an accumulation of archaeological material, be that accumulation ever so large.
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- Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c.300–1450 , pp. 553 - 669Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985