Numismatic Circulation in the Mediterranean Islands under Byzantine Rule

Recent decades have seen an increased interest in Byzantine islands, focusing on different aspects of their particularities characterizing insular environments. Numismatic circulation does not constitute an exception in that respect, since it has been one of the first scientific fields that have highlighted these particularities. Sicily, for example, has been rightly exemplified as one of the main exceptions in the so-called grande brèche, that is the quasi total absence of numismatic finds in Byzantine sites between the end of the 7 th and the beginning of the 9 th century. The inherent fragmentation, however, of the insular world renders the study of numismatic circulation in the Mediterranean particularly difficult, a difficulty that is further accrued by the fragmentation of relevant publications in different languages, often hard to access. The creation of the database NOMISMATA, a geo- and chrono-referenced database of coin finds, hosted by the University of Trieste (Italy) ( https://byzantine.units.it/en/), which incorporates and visualizes data from all these publications in a uniform manner, allows now a better and wider study of numismatic circulation in the Mediterranean islands under Byzantine rule, which will form the core of this paper.