Mairi Gkikaki
Numismatist, Director of the “TokAthe” research program on the tokens in ancient Athens
Mairi Gkikaki is a numismatist. Following her studies in History, Archaeology, and Geography in Greece and Germany, and after working in the Ministry of Culture (2012-2016) and the Digital Museum of Acropolis (2014) and teaching History of Arts at the Hellenic Open University (2016-2020), she became a commissioned Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. Since 2018 and as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, she serves as the director behind her own research program, “TokAthe,” dealing with the tokens (symbola) in ancient Athens, after her proposal was selected for funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. In December 2019, she organized at the British School of Athens the first-ever international scientific summit on tokens, entitled “Symbola: The Athenian Legacy to the Modern World.”
Tokens are known from philosophical texts of the classical era as objects that perform their function only when they unite with their other half and regain thus their complete form. This can take place within processes of friendship and hospitality ratification, as well as a way of sealing agreements of all kinds and, in the process, recognition of the obligations between counterparties. The tokens inscribed with the names of demes and tribes comprise one of the most intriguing pages in the political history of classical Athens, as they allowed the distribution of offices within the demes according to a quota proportional to their population, all the while preventing phenomena of corruption.
In iconographic terms, the tokens are differentiated from other iconographic cases of ancient Greek art. Their themes were rich and original, while they also maintained the element of a ‘code’, which was disclosed only in the context of a ‘transaction’ or an ‘agreement’. Regarding their mode of function, tokens are inspired by principles of equal participation. The ‘community’ sets tokens into circulation and distributes them to its members according to the rules of the community.
Gkikaki has written two volumes on the use of tokens in the society and politics of ancient Athens, which are scheduled for publication in 2023 by Liverpool University Press.
