The goal of the 2016 meeting is to continue traditional monetary history under DAMIN, while at the same time encouraging dialogue among monetary historians, numismatists, mining historians, geologists, and other scientists (see, for example, interdisciplinary linkages encouraged by the International Big History Association).

The object is to encourage broad historical analysis of diverse trade objects in relation to means of exchange, including geological concentrations of raw materials across the globe, exploration, mining (in the case of metals), monetary production (including minting), and distribution of final products to end-markets throughout the world. Envisioning monetary history broadly is important because control of raw materials conferred economic power, as did fabrication of monies, exchange of monies for other monies, and exchange of monies for non-monetary items.

Equivalent linkages existed for non-metallic payment devices documented throughout history. In some cases, uneven distribution of mines across the globe induced authorities to adopt alternative means of payment, such as chocolate, cowries, rice, beans, textiles, and numerous other monetized objects. These choices influenced social, political, and trade relations, leading to diverse monetary arrangements and various paths of economic development around the world. 

Given emphasis upon nineteenth-century topics at this 2016 California conference, organizers decided to meet initially for two days in San Francisco, a city founded in response to California’s post-1848 Gold Rush, yet propulsion of metropolitan San Francisco to global status depended upon post-1859 Comstock Lode silver discoveries in Nevada (as emphasized in conference presentations).

The conference venue shifted on Day 3 eighty miles eastward to the School of International Studies, University of the Pacific, in Stockton, a deep-water port founded at the time of the California Gold Rush. A lecture at Lake Tahoe on Day 4 focused on provision of water from the Nevada-side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains – gravity fed eastward down into the Carson Valley – then pushed up to the Comstock Lode farther eastward during the 19 th century. The venue for Day 5 was historic Virginia City, Nevada, which is sinking due to its location directly atop a vast maze of mines shafts of the Comstock Lode, world dominant source of silver for decades. (There was also a side-visit to Sutro Tunnel, designed to drain wastewater from deep within Comstock Mines westward down into the Carson Valley.)

An afternoon in Old Town Sacramento, historic port-city and railroad town through which Nevada silver was exported, highlighted the return trip to San Francisco on Day 6. It is hoped that in-person views of California/Nevada geological formations, challenging transportation routes, mines, coins, and environmental legacies have helped participants to visualize integrated systems that have historically linked – and continue to link – underground activities to diverse end-market destinations over thousands of years.