A Preliminary Survey of Evidence for Counters and Tokens in the Aegean and Hellenic World

This paper briefly reviews testimonies in the Aegean and Hellenic world of certain classes of small artefacts which in other contexts have been explained – with different degrees of certitude – as ‘tokens’ and ‘counters’. The main proposals for their interpretation put forward so far are also examined. Among the artefacts possibly belonging to arithmetic or recording systems there are abundant sherd disks, perforated or not, corresponding to the “reworked sherd” of the Near Eastern classification. They result to be generally spread in the course of Neolithic through mainland Greece, in the islands, in Crete. On the other hand the diffusion of these pottery disks has been observed in many Mediterranean settlement sites, starting from the 3rd millennium, then coinciding with the decline of Near Eastern tokens (that is the small hand shaped clay objects, an assemblage of which has been also recognized in Mycenae, Temple Complex, fill XI). Hellenic cut-discs are generally considered either game-pieces or stoppers / lids; recently they have been even explained as “convenient wipes”, destined to a hygienic function, because of their association with discarded materials of mixed domestic and artisanal provenance, dug in the Agora of Athens. The A. assumes that the great variety of contexts where these class of objects have been found is compatible with varoiuos different functions, including that of counting devices, applying to a broad variety of situations. In well determined and specialised contexts, the counters become game pieces or voting devices: leaving history for mythology, Achille’s armours are attributed thanks to a vote (krysis hoplon) through pebbles made under Athena’s eyes.