Trade and the end of antiquity, or did Islam serve to deglobalize the world?

How did trade and economic activity evolve at the End of Antiquity, when political power shifts away from the Mediterranean towards the Middle East and northern Europe? No records of ancient production, consumption, and trade exist. Yet the composition of coin finds reveals information about monetized transactions, as coins gradually diffused along trade routes. To recover trade and consumption time series, we assemble a database of half a million ancient coins from the fourth to the tenth century and estimate a dynamic model of trade and money.…