CLA-HLS ART-PAW 548
Ancient
and Medieval Numismatics
Alan
M. Stahl, Instructor
Fall
semester 2014
Thursdays, 1:30-4:20
Firestone Library 1-8-H
The seminar will cover the basic methodology of numismatics and will survey the Western coinage tradition, from its origins through the end of the Middle Ages. Students will research and report on problems involving coinages related to their own areas of specialization. Most of the seminar meetings will be divided into three parts: student presentations, methodological discussion, and a review of a particular historical coinage.
Each participant will select a coin from the University’s collection and use it as the basis for weekly reports related to the methodological issues under discussion. The coins will be selected in consultation with the instructor to relate to the student’s academic specialization and to present interesting problems of attribution, production or circulation. At about the middle of the semester, each student will develop a research project, perhaps based on the coinage he or she has been reporting on, and will discuss methodological strategies with the class. The final two sessions will be devoted to oral presentations of results of the research, and students taking the seminar for credit will be required to turn in a written research paper.
The methodological topics that will be discussed will include mint study, die study, hoard analysis, archaeological inference from coin finds, and scientific and statistical techniques of numismatic analysis. Specific examples of the use of each methodology will be selected to illustrate the interests of the participants and will be analyzed from a historical as well as numismatic perspective.
The
history of ancient and medieval coinage will be surveyed in PowerPoint
presentations by the instructor on the origin of coinage in the Greco-Persian
world; the development of archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greek coinages;
Roman republican, imperial and provincial issues; Byzantine coinage; Islamic
coinage; and the coinage of medieval and renaissance
Background reading
Andrew Burnett, Coins (
Philip Grierson, Numismatics (
C. J. Howgego, Ancient History from Coins (New York, 1995)
Syllabus
Week 1: September 11
Introductions
Bibliography
How coins were made and circulated: Grierson, pp. 84-123.
Week 2: September 18
Student presentations: coin description
Mint and die study: Burnett, pp. 1-28, Grierson, pp. 140-46, Howgego, pp. 1-38
Origins of coinage, classical Greek coinage
Week 3: September 25
Student presentations: mint study and history of scholarship
Hoard study: Burnett, pp. 51-57, Grierson, pp. 124-36, Howgego, pp. 88-110
Hellenistic Greek coinage
Week 4: October 2
Student presentations: hoard report
Archaeology and numismatics: Burnett, pp. 48-51, Grierson, pp. 136-39
Roman Republican coinage
Week 5: October 9
Student presentations: site find
Metrology: Grierson, pp. 146-61, Howgego, pp. 39-61
Roman Imperial and Provincial Coinage
Week 6: October 16
Student presentations: documentary analysis
Scientific analysis
Later Roman coinage and early medieval coinage
Week 7: October 23
Student presentations: paper proposals
Economics and numismatics: Howgego, pp. 111-40
Byzantine coinage
Week 8: November 6
Statistical
applications: Burnett, pp. 42-47; Keith Hopkins, “Taxes and Trade in the Roman
Empire (200 B.C. – A.D. 400), Journal of
Roman Studies, 70 (1980), 101-24 [online via JSTOR]; Richard Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire
(
Numismatics and the Antiquities trade
Islamic Coinage
Week 9: November 13
Case study: the mint of Venice
Medieval coinage, Renaissance medals
Week 10: November 20
Final project workshop
Week 11: December 4
Student presentations
Week 12: December 11
Student presentations
Alan M. Stahl
Firestone Library, RBSC
(609) 258-9127