G Scott Davis
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 325045 |
|---|---|
| NOME | G Scott Davis |
| PRENOMES | G Scott |
| SOBRENOME | Davis |
| ASSINATURA | DAVIS G S |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Richmond |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9436-5024 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 111 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1997 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
When is an owl not an owl? An analysis of Attic tetradrachms circulating in the southern Levant in the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE
International audience
Kyrbeis
Although no kyrbis physically survives and there is no completely unambiguous ancient description or illustration, the collective evidence suggests that kyrbeis were freestanding, three‐sided wooden objects with a peaked top, whitened or plastered to bear an inscription. They were used in the sixth to early fifth century bce around the Greek world to carry an authoritative text including laws, sacrifices, messages, and oracles or prophesies. At A…
Levantine Hacksilber and the flow of silver in early Mediterranean commerce
This study presents a comprehensive approach to provenancing ancient silver artefacts, introducing a novel algorithm to correct for mass‐dependent isotope fractionation. Applied to a Pb isotope database of 281 Hacksilber samples from southern Levantine hoards (1700–600 BCE) and compared with approximately 7000 galena ores from Spain to Iran, the analysis reveals shifting silver sources over time. Trade of the Levantine merchants with the pre‐ and…
Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens
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-e…
Identifying silver ore sources for the earliest coins of Athens
This study addresses longstanding questions concerning the ore sources used in the first series of coins of ancient Athens known as the Wappenmϋnzen (c.540-c.500 BCE) by combining comprehensive numismatic data on 22 coins (16 new and 6 legacy analyses) with lead isotope and surface elemental measurements (MC-ICP-MS and XRF). It finds usage of ores from Spain to Romania and Türkiye and frequent mixing. This upends current thinking based on a (mis)…
A new algorithm for using Pb isotopes to determine the provenance of bullion in ancient Greek coinage
A new algorithm is proposed that uses Pb isotopes to help identify the ore deposits utilized as sources of silver in Antiquity. The algorithm takes natural and analytical isotope fractionation into account. It proposes a statistical measure of the distances between the Pb isotope compositions of ores and artifacts. This measure is amenable to statistical tests at any confidence level. The new algorithm is applied to the Pb isotope compositions of…
Making money out of making money in ancient Athens
The observed weights of ancient coins are usually less than the nominal “ideal” weights of the coin standards to which they belong because state authorities took a fee—“seigniorage”—for minting coins to cover costs and to make a profit. The basis for calculating the amount taken by the state and the way it administered manufacture are not well understood. Here we analyze the weights of 1344 of the earliest coins of Athens (c. 550–479 bce ). We re…
Comment on Mints not Mines
Wood et al. (2023), hereinafter WPB, unveils a number of historical issues relevant to Roman economy and metallurgy based on trace element and Pb isotope abundance data on a large set of important coins minted during the Roman Empire (Ponting and Butcher 2015). Here, we discuss several points which, in our view, misrepresent the work of other groups, ours included, and bias the overall interpretation of the WPB data set.
Analyses of queen Hetepheres’ bracelets from her celebrated tomb in Giza reveals new information on silver, metallurgy and trade in Old Kingdom Egypt, c. 2600 BC
Egypt has no domestic silver ore sources and silver is rarely found in the Egyptian archaeological record until the Middle Bronze Age. Bracelets found in the tomb of queen Hetepheres I, mother of pyramid builder king Khufu (date of reign c. 2589–2566 BC), form the largest and most famous collection of silver artefacts from early Egypt, but they have not been analysed for decades. We analysed samples from the collection in the Museum of Fine Arts,…
Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt
Was silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model …
Isotope and trace element compositions of silver-bearing ores in the Balkans as possible metal sources in antiquity
Ore deposits in the Balkan Peninsula were intensively mined for silver and other metals in the Roman and medieval periods. Coinage mainly issued by tribal groups between the early 5th and the end of the 3rd century BCE provides indirect evidence that silver extraction predates the Roman conquest of the region. However, identification of centers of past metal production and reconstruction of large-scale silver fluxes can only be achieved using a c…
Narrowing provenance for ancient Greek silver coins using Ag isotopes and Sb contents of potential ores
International audience
Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant
Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel …
New Findings of Ancient Greek Silver Sources
Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this endeavor. While most studies so far have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources, the present study takes a different approach by first identifying Ag-bearing ore sources in the Aegean world based on their geological characteristics and then using Pb…
From commodity to money
The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect the mixing of silver ores or silver objects with Pb m…
The Phenomenology of Democracy
Molly Farneth’s Hegel’s Social Ethics hearkens back to the tradition of Josiah Royce, which has continued in the work of Richard Bernstein and Jeffrey Stout. At the same time, it reflects the impact of three decades of interpretive work which has offered an alternative to the 19th and early 20th century reading of Hegel as a metaphysical systematizer. In this new reading he was from the beginning a social critic and political theorist who looked …
A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean
The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations proper because of a variety of limitations of their time. Archeological evidence in the form of minin…
Separating silver sources of Archaic Athenian coinage by comprehensive compositional analyses
This article demonstrates that distinct and coherent silver sources can be discriminated from surface compositional analyses. In the first large-scale study of Archaic (pre-479 BC) Athenian silver coins in museum collections around the world, we analysed 788 coins by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry with a mathematical correction to provide a reliable composition for key diagnostic elements. Principal Component Analysis rev…
How Shall We Read the History of Ethics
This response suggests that in writing the history of ethics, it is important to take seriously what the principals wrote and believed, distinguishing it carefully from our own responses to their writings, or from subsequent uses to which their writings may have been put. For example, when reading Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria on just war against non‐Christian peoples, forcible conversion and conquest are clearly condemned. Whatever the…
Semantics and the Study of Religion
This essay argues that the approach to meaning articulated by Donald Davidson supplies all the student of religion needs to know about this subject. By focusing on interpretation as understood by Davidson, we can understand, for example, the beliefs and practices of a people such as the Dogon of Mali. By adding to this the evidence of ethnography and history, students of religion can give a compelling account of change and adjudicate between comp…
The Elimination of “Violence” in Just War Thinking
Islam Observed Another Neglected Classic of Comparative Religion and Ethics
Despite the appearance of disagreement, John Kelsay and I agree on the continuing importance of Max Weber for work in comparative religion and ethics. My objections to “grand theory” are those of C. Wright Mills, who worries about the professionalization of work in the social sciences stifling “the sociological imagination.” I go on to argue that Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed is a valuable paradigm of how to do comparative ethics diachronicall…
Religion and Justice in the War Over Bosnia
This volume brings together a distinguished group of thinkers, working in ethics, religion and history, to explore moral and religious issues that underlie the violence in Bosnia. ********************************************************* This volume brings together a distinguished group of thinkers to explore the moral and religious issues that underlie the violence and atrocities in Bosnia. From diverse academic and philosophical perspectives, t…
Justice, Intention, and Double Effect
Mining money in Late Archaic Athens
Silver mining helped transform Athens from a quiet backwater ca. 600 BCE to a dominant regional and naval power a little over a century later, but despite having large argentiferous ore deposits and being an early minter, she did not initially use much native silver for her coinage. In this paper I identify technical and geopolitical factors which explain this. I also explore the related and controversial questions of the extent to which the Athe…
A miner's perspective on Pb isotope provenances in the Western and Central Mediterranean
The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations proper because of a variety of limitations of their time. Archeological evidence in the form of minin…
Metal provenance of Iron Age Hacksilber hoards in the southern Levant
Hacksilber facilitated trade and transactions from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the late fourth century BCE in the southern Levant. Here we demonstrate the use of new, data-driven statistical approaches to interpret high-precision Pb isotope analysis of silver found in archaeological contexts for provenance determination. We sampled 45 pieces of Hacksilber from five hoards (Megiddo Area H, Eshtemoa, Tel Dor, ʿEn Gedi, and Tel …
Dating the Drachmas in Solon’s Laws
Can the drachmas in the 'laws of Solon' be explained as silver weights, used in the Athenian economy as a silver standard before the adoption of coinage in the second half of the sixth century BCE? I believe the answer is a firm no. In this paper I marshal historical, archaeological, numismatic and literary evidence to demonstrate that pre-Peisistratid Athens had an essentially agrarian economy in which local trade was usually denominated in barl…
Mining money in Late Archaic Athens
Silver mining helped transform Athens from a quiet backwater ca. 600 BCE to a dominant regional and naval power a little over a century later, but despite having large argentiferous ore deposits and being an early minter, she did not initially use much native silver for her coinage. In this paper I identify technical and geopolitical factors which explain this. I also explore the related and controversial questions of the extent to which the Athe…
Bullion mixtures in silver coinage from ancient Greece and Egypt
Was silver coinage minted from fresh metal newly extracted from the mine or was it from recycled silver deriving from older coins, silverware, or cult objects? The answer helps understand the provenance of coins and their circulation. Using Pb isotopes, the present work proposes a method to disentangle the sources of 368 silver-alloy coins from Athens, Corinth, Aegina, Thasos, Thrace, Macedonia, and Ptolemaic Egypt. We outline a new mixing model …
New Findings of Ancient Greek Silver Sources
Over the last 60 years, much analytical research has sought to determine the ore sources of ancient Greek silver artefacts. Lead isotopic analysis has played a key role in this endeavor. While most studies so far have limited their search to places mentioned in historical sources, the present study takes a different approach by first identifying Ag-bearing ore sources in the Aegean world based on their geological characteristics and then using Pb…
Separating silver sources of Archaic Athenian coinage by comprehensive compositional analyses
This article demonstrates that distinct and coherent silver sources can be discriminated from surface compositional analyses. In the first large-scale study of Archaic (pre-479 BC) Athenian silver coins in museum collections around the world, we analysed 788 coins by Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry with a mathematical correction to provide a reliable composition for key diagnostic elements. Principal Component Analysis rev…
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism and the Study of Religion
Donald Davidson's concept of "anomalous monism" is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of "conceptual schemes," though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, "cognitive science" is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on mod…
A new algorithm for using Pb isotopes to determine the provenance of bullion in ancient Greek coinage
A new algorithm is proposed that uses Pb isotopes to help identify the ore deposits utilized as sources of silver in Antiquity. The algorithm takes natural and analytical isotope fractionation into account. It proposes a statistical measure of the distances between the Pb isotope compositions of ores and artifacts. This measure is amenable to statistical tests at any confidence level. The new algorithm is applied to the Pb isotope compositions of…
Isotope and trace element compositions of silver-bearing ores in the Balkans as possible metal sources in antiquity
Ore deposits in the Balkan Peninsula were intensively mined for silver and other metals in the Roman and medieval periods. Coinage mainly issued by tribal groups between the early 5th and the end of the 3rd century BCE provides indirect evidence that silver extraction predates the Roman conquest of the region. However, identification of centers of past metal production and reconstruction of large-scale silver fluxes can only be achieved using a c…
Narrowing provenance for ancient Greek silver coins using Ag isotopes and Sb contents of potential ores
International audience
From commodity to money
The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed between 109 Ag/ 107 Ag and 208 Pb/ 206 Pb reflect the mixing of silver ores or silver objects with Pb m…
Identifying silver ore sources for the earliest coins of Athens
This study addresses longstanding questions concerning the ore sources used in the first series of coins of ancient Athens known as the Wappenmϋnzen (c.540-c.500 BCE) by combining comprehensive numismatic data on 22 coins (16 new and 6 legacy analyses) with lead isotope and surface elemental measurements (MC-ICP-MS and XRF). It finds usage of ores from Spain to Romania and Türkiye and frequent mixing. This upends current thinking based on a (mis)…
Axones and Kurbeis
What were axones and kurbeis, and why are they important to understanding law-making in late archaic and classical Athens? This paper presents a new solution to the long standing riddle. It is based on a comprehensive collection of the literary and inscriptional sources which are summarised in chronological order, and analysed by shape, material, content and period. It demonstrates that kurbeis were 3-sided, free-standing, wooden objects used thr…
Levantine Hacksilber and the flow of silver in early Mediterranean commerce
This study presents a comprehensive approach to provenancing ancient silver artefacts, introducing a novel algorithm to correct for mass‐dependent isotope fractionation. Applied to a Pb isotope database of 281 Hacksilber samples from southern Levantine hoards (1700–600 BCE) and compared with approximately 7000 galena ores from Spain to Iran, the analysis reveals shifting silver sources over time. Trade of the Levantine merchants with the pre‐ and…
Tyrants, democrats and the first silver 'owl' coins of Athens
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-e…
Sharia Reasoning and the Pursuit of Democracy
John Kelsay's Arguing the Just War in Islam is not simply the most insightful and up to date introduction to thinking about war in the Islamic traditions; it also incorporates a subtle argument about the direction in which the foreign policy of the United States needs to move in order to regain a functional degree of credibility in the Muslim world. If Kelsay is correct, as I believe him to be, then his volume reflects in important ways the impac…
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism and the Study of Religion
Conscience and Conquest
The author considers the work of the 16th century Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria on the justice of the conquest of the Americas. He argues that it is essential to read Vitoria’s work in the light of Thomas Aquinas’s views on virtue and conscience. In this light, Vitoria’s condemnation of the Conquistadors is more sweeping than previous interpreters have thought. Finally, the author suggests that there is an important rift between Vitoria’…
War and Its Discontents
Letters, Notes, & Comments
Comment by Aaron L. Mackler on “‘Through Her I Too Shall Bear a Child’: Birth Surrogates in Jewish Law” by Elie Spitz Reply by Elie Kaplan Spitz Research Note by G. Scott Davis
The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions
A Whig History of Ethic
J. B. Schneewind's The Invention of Autonomy has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition form late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over the…
A Vindication of Theology
Alain Epp Weaver's analysis of the theological foundations of Augustine's proscription of all lies in all circumstances does more than improve our understanding of Augustine. In drawing a plausible and illuminating parallel between the theological logic of Augustine and the theological logic of John Howard Yoder, Weaver not only succeeds in defining the credibility of Christian pacifism but also provides support for interpreting Yoder as a biblic…
The Pragmatic Turn in the Study of Religion
Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition puts forward a complex argument in favor of American democracy as a healthy and legitimate moral and political tradition in itself. Stout does not dwell on the place of his own work in the “pragmatic” approach to the study of religion in the last thirty years. This paper attempts to situate Stout's work in the approach to religion identified with Mary Douglas and Wayne Proudfoot and to suggest some of the c…
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism and the Study of Religion
Donald Davidson's concept of "anomalous monism" is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of "conceptual schemes," though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, "cognitive science" is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on mod…
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism and the Study of Religion
Two Neglected Classics of Comparative Ethics
Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger and Herbert Fingarette's Confucius: The Secular as Sacred have had a continuous impact on cultural anthropology and the study of ancient Chinese thought, respectively, but neither has typically been read as a contribution to comparative religious ethics. This paper argues that both books developed from profound dissatisfaction with the empiricist presuppositions that dominated their fields into the 1970s and that …
Ethics and Religion
This essay surveys the relations between ethics and religion in a variety of comparative contexts. It suggests replacing the older paradigms of moral theory, for example, deontology/teleology/consequentialism, with a more supple one deploying law, character, and economics. At the same time, it argues for an emphasis on history and ethnography that will ultimately blur both typologies and disciplinary boundaries. This is a good thing if we wish to…
Richard Rorty and the pragmatic turn in the study of religion
Recent interest in the pragmatic tradition draws much of its impetus fromthework of Richard Rorty and his critics. This paper argues that Rorty's late interest in religion derives from his abiding interests in American liberalism and not specifically from his Pragmatism. Students of religion, however, have much to learn from the pragmatic tradition and over the last 25 years work by Wayne Proudfoot, Jeffrey Stout, and others has been important in…
Affirming the Worth of the Victim
Axones and Kurbeis
What were axones and kurbeis, and why are they important to understanding law-making in late archaic and classical Athens? This paper presents a new solution to the long standing riddle. It is based on a comprehensive collection of the literary and inscriptional sources which are summarised in chronological order, and analysed by shape, material, content and period. It demonstrates that kurbeis were 3-sided, free-standing, wooden objects used thr…
Sharia Reasoning and the Pursuit of Democracy
John Kelsay's Arguing the Just War in Islam is not simply the most insightful and up to date introduction to thinking about war in the Islamic traditions; it also incorporates a subtle argument about the direction in which the foreign policy of the United States needs to move in order to regain a functional degree of credibility in the Muslim world. If Kelsay is correct, as I believe him to be, then his volume reflects in important ways the impac…
Response to Commentators
Dating the Drachmas in Solon’s Laws
Can the drachmas in the 'laws of Solon' be explained as silver weights, used in the Athenian economy as a silver standard before the adoption of coinage in the second half of the sixth century BCE? I believe the answer is a firm no. In this paper I marshal historical, archaeological, numismatic and literary evidence to demonstrate that pre-Peisistratid Athens had an essentially agrarian economy in which local trade was usually denominated in barl…
De iustitia
Francisco de Vitoria. De iustitia: Über die Gerechtigkeit Teil 1. Ed. Joachim Stüben. Politische Philosophie und Rechtstheorie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit 1: Texte 3. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2013. cxii + 192 pp. €168. ISBN: 978–3–7728–2506–4. - Volume 66 Issue 3
Religion and Justice in the War Over Bosnia
This volume brings together a distinguished group of thinkers, working in ethics, religion and history, to explore moral and religious issues that underlie the violence in Bosnia. ********************************************************* This volume brings together a distinguished group of thinkers to explore the moral and religious issues that underlie the violence and atrocities in Bosnia. From diverse academic and philosophical perspectives, t…
Justice, Intention, and Double Effect
Mining money in Late Archaic Athens
Silver mining helped transform Athens from a quiet backwater ca. 600 BCE to a dominant regional and naval power a little over a century later, but despite having large argentiferous ore deposits and being an early minter, she did not initially use much native silver for her coinage. In this paper I identify technical and geopolitical factors which explain this. I also explore the related and controversial questions of the extent to which the Athe…
The Elimination of “Violence” in Just War Thinking
Islam Observed Another Neglected Classic of Comparative Religion and Ethics
Despite the appearance of disagreement, John Kelsay and I agree on the continuing importance of Max Weber for work in comparative religion and ethics. My objections to “grand theory” are those of C. Wright Mills, who worries about the professionalization of work in the social sciences stifling “the sociological imagination.” I go on to argue that Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed is a valuable paradigm of how to do comparative ethics diachronicall…
Semantics and the Study of Religion
This essay argues that the approach to meaning articulated by Donald Davidson supplies all the student of religion needs to know about this subject. By focusing on interpretation as understood by Davidson, we can understand, for example, the beliefs and practices of a people such as the Dogon of Mali. By adding to this the evidence of ethnography and history, students of religion can give a compelling account of change and adjudicate between comp…
How Shall We Read the History of Ethics
This response suggests that in writing the history of ethics, it is important to take seriously what the principals wrote and believed, distinguishing it carefully from our own responses to their writings, or from subsequent uses to which their writings may have been put. For example, when reading Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria on just war against non‐Christian peoples, forcible conversion and conquest are clearly condemned. Whatever the…
History (19 obras) · Political science (17 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Archaeology (15 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Ancient history (13 obras) · History (12 obras) · Sociology (12 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (11 obras) · Epistemology (11 obras)