Below are abstracts and times for two numismatic sessions at the
Joint Annual Meeting of the AIA in Philadelphia, Jan. 8-11, 2009.
The abstracts for the AIA/APA meetings are now fully searchable
online.

I take the text below directly from my blog entry, where hyperlinks
for the abstracts are active.
http://coinarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/12/abstracts-for-two-
numismatic-sessions.html

Best,
Nathan Elkins

___________________________

In a previous post I discussed the upcoming colloquium, "Contextual
Numismatics: New Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Methodologies,"
at the 2009 AIA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia that Stefan Krmnicek
and I organized. The AIA has now finalized the program of sessions
and papers for the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia and abstracts are
now available online, including those for our session. For
convenience I post the abstracts for our session and the topics about
which our panelists will speak below. The APA, whose Annual Meeting
is joint with the AIA's, has a session on "Coins and Identity" and I
post those abstracts below as well.



AIA Session 6A
Contextual Numismatics: New Perspectives and Interdisciplinary
Methodologies
Saturday, January 10, 2009, 1:30-4:30


Organizers: Nathan T. Elkins, Goethe Universität Frankfurt /
University of Missouri; Stefan Krmnicek, Goethe Universität Frankfurt

1. Session Introduction (Nathan T. Elkins, Goethe Universität
Frankfurt / University of Missouri)


Colloquium Overview Statement:

The participants in this panel expound innovative and dynamic
approaches to the contextual study of ancient coins within an
interdisciplinary framework. Coins have often been reduced to mere
aesthetic objects or chronological references divorced from
consideration of their original contexts in which they were once
embedded. A multidisciplinary treatment of the individual dimensions
of an ancient object (functional, social, historical, political,
personal, etc.) provides a better understanding of its contemporary
meaning. In the study of ancient art and culture, for example, modern
scholarship has successfully applied such approaches. Unlike most art
objects, however, coins also have an equally strong practical and
functional quality, which must be investigated in conjunction with
their other dimensions and within the wider context of material
culture. Therefore, the numismatist ought to formulate proper
methodologies that address these factors suitably.
Using the above methodologies and approaches, the first two papers in
this panel explore the theoretical premises in which numismatics can
be applied in a wider interdisciplinary framework. The third examines
the relationship between hoarders and hoards, while the fourth
considers the semantic value of certain coin types. The final paper
reconsiders chisel cuts on Athenian tetradrachms in relation to
function in light of hoard context. Fleur Kemmers, who has
successfully applied the concept of Bildsprache to coins from
excavated contexts, and who is sensitive to the advantages of
developing numismatic method and theory, provides discussion.


2. Two Sides of a Coin: Etic Structures and Emic Perspectives in
Numismatics (Stefan Krmnicek, Goethe Universität Frankfurt)

This study discusses ancient coin finds in the wider cross-
disciplinary framework of cultural anthropological and sociological
theories. The current state of research in numismatics, the limits of
contemporary numismatic methodology, and a discussion about new
perspectives take center stage.

Typically in Classical archaeology and historical disciplines,
ancient coins are uniformly perceived as money in modern economic
terms; alternative or complementary functions of coins are rarely
considered. In the past few years—influenced by the concepts of
exchange, barter, and reciprocity—Iron Age numismatists have
developed a dichotomy between ritual and non-ritual interpretations
for a better understanding of the meaning and function of Celtic
coins replacing the exclusively economic line of interpretation.

However, like all archaeological artifacts, coins cannot be reduced
solely to one lifelong meaning, whether singularly economic or
ritual. Ancient coins, like other objects, are actively meaningful in
various dimensions through the relationships established with people.
The object's function and usage can change constantly—in the systemic
context of the past and even in today's world. These individual
moments of practical usage can be understood through the model of a
theoretical biography of the object. In effect, however, only the
final context in the biography of a coin in the past Lebenswelt
provides proper archaeological interpretations of the archaeological
evidence. As a consequence, only archaeologically recovered coin
finds, with a well-documented archaeological context, are suitable
for understanding the usage and meaning for their contemporary
consumer.

3. Working in Between: Numismatics as Historical Archaeology
(Nanouschka Myrberg, Stockholm University)

The focus here is on the numismatic discipline as a scholarly field
of research. History, archaeology, art history, and economic history
are closely related disciplines, whose materials, methods, and
terminology are often used and touched upon. Between archaeology's
centering on the object and history's detached attitude to material
culture, there is a space or field of tension where numismatic
practice can choose to orient itself more or less outspokenly to the
one or the other pole.

Working on coins within the theoretical and methodological framework
of historical archaeology implies giving equal weight to several
aspects and contexts of the objects. Coins incorporate the dimensions
of object, text, and picture. These dimensions have parallel
functions and strata of meaning, which do not exclude but reinforce
each other, even when they are not obviously speaking with one single
voice. The practical function as a monetary object is an essential
aspect of coins, but not the only one. Thus it is essential to
benefit from the numismatist's knowledge of the coin's primary
context (origin) as well as to create an understanding of the
secondary contexts (uses, reuses, and deposition). Between the one
context and the other, the coins go through transformations, which
may consist of transportations, demonetisation, mutilation,
additions, and various reuses. This is their life biography, of which
every stage is of interest to numismatic studies.

4. Interrogating Ancient Coin Finds: What They Say, and What They Do
Not Know (Georges Depeyrot, Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique; Delia Moisil, National Museum of History of Romania)

Over the past decade, we have been publishing the systematic
inventories of ancient Greek and Roman coin finds from the regions of
the Transcaucasus (Georgia, Armenia) and from the countries of
Central Europe (Poland, Romania, Moldova, Ex-USSR, etc.).

This extensive documentation allows a clear understanding of the
distribution of coin finds, but also the distribution of ensembles,
single finds, and/or hoards.

We can interrogate this documentation to understand how coins
circulated in antiquity. Their wear indicates whether or not they
were used in daily transactions and for how long. Finally, the
importance of hoards reveals several modes of conservation but also
the nature of discoveries.

We consider, for example, discoveries of silver Roman coins from
Romania. More than 500 hoards have been inventoried. Some hoards were
reconstituted by the addition of coins at later dates.

We evaluate the relationship between currencies, money, and those who
retained them. It is possible to depart from the traditional
numismatic and historical approach and try to consider a new approach
to the study of coin hoards. This method is influenced more from
anthropology than archaeology.

This systematic study considers the monetary economy during the
period from the second century B.C. to the end of the third century
A.D.

5. Coin Imagery, Authority and Communication: the Case of the Later
Soldier-Emperors, ca. A.D. 260–295 (Ragnar Hedlund, Uppsala
University)

I present an investigation of the coinages of the later so-called
soldier-emperors of the later half of the third century A.D. This age
has often been described as an age of crisis. However, to what extent
is this a crisis of imperial authority?

The third century has long been the focus of much scholarly
attention. Not least, much recent work has been done on the coinages
of this age. I suggest that the idea of a crisis of imperial
authority in the later third century can be approached through a
combination of more recent historical theory—most prominently
concerning issues of legitimacy, authority, and communication—with
the most recent publications of numismatic material. I approach the
coins struck for the soldier-emperors as a means of communication,
the aim of which is to express Roman imperial authority. This
authority should be understood in relation to an idea of "Roman
identity."

One of the most important results is that a process of
regionalization can be discerned. Images on coins struck in the
provinces vividly express the development of a "common Roman
identity," and a sense of a "shared Roman memory." I argue that the
developments of such notions are connected to the process through
which the city of Rome was gradually losing its power in favor of the
capitals established under the tetrarchs, and ultimately in favor of
the city of Constantinople.

6. Chisel Cuts: Bureaucratic Control Marks on Fifth Century Owls in
the Near East? (Richard Fernando Buxton, University of Washington)

Gashes made by a chisel across either face of Athenian silver
tetradrachms (henceforth "owls") are a common feature in fourth-
century B.C. hoards from the Near East. Although frequently dismissed
as the result of unsystematic metal tests conducted on owls that were
solely regarded as bullion, recent scholars such as P.G. van Alfen
(AJN 14 [2003] 1-57) point to the consistent patterning in the
placement of such chisel cuts in relation to the owl's iconography.
Van Alfen accordingly argues that this consistency suggests the
marks, whether metal test or not, served to identify the coins not as
bullion, but rather as discrete objects within a regularized system
of bureaucratic control administered from the Near East.

Since such observations have thus far been confined to fourth century
owl hoards, this paper examines evidence for regularized patterns of
Near Eastern chisel cuts even earlier in the fifth century when owls
first reached wide circulation. I argue that close attention to the
find spots (e.g. IGCH 1259) and archaeological contexts (e.g. IGCH
1649) of fifth century hoards demonstrates that systematic chisel
cuts were already well developed in the region by the start of the
fourth century within a self-contained economy that did not feed back
into Greece and its hoards. Such a division is consistent with
patterns observed for the fourth century and suggests that the common
view that owls were used in the Near East during the fifth-century,
primarily for transactions with Greek mercenaries and merchants,
requires serious modification.

Discussant: Fleur Kemmers (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

__________________________________________________



APA Section 59
Coins and Identity
Sunday, January 11, 2009, 1:45 - 4:15

Organizers: The Friends of Numismatics / Jane De Rose Evans

Session Abstract:


Six papers will focus on what a coin meant to the person arranging
its creation and on what it meant to a person using the coin, as well
as what it meant to a person hoarding or collecting the coin. From
the types of Campania and the Akarnanian League in the fourth century
BC to the iconography of the Late Antique, the papers will analyze
how coins reflect political propaganda and how their types relate to
contemporary events and local cults and religion.


1. Their Neighbor's Keeper: A Neapolitan Coin for Capua (Rabun
Taylor, The University of Texas at Austin)


The bronze coinage of Hellenistic Neapolis (Italy) is dominated by
imagery of Apollo, who is known to have had a robust cult in this
city. But in the second half of the third century, shortly before it
ceased minting altogether, Neapolis briefly issued an obol
representing Artemis/Diana on the obverse and a cornucopia on the
reverse. Both motifs are anomalous for this city; and the pairing of
the hunter-goddess with a symbol of agricultural bounty seems doubly
puzzling. This paper will argue that the imagery on the coin is
intended to signify not Neapolis, but the rival Campanian city of
Capua – a city which, on the one hand, was an agricultural power
befitting the cornucopia; and which, on the other, oversaw the second
most important cult of Diana in all of Italy, on nearby Monte Tifata.
Why would Neapolis assume an alien identity on its coinage?

In 216, during the Second Punic War, Capua took a desperate gamble by
switching its allegiance from Rome to Hannibal. Neapolis, as always,
remained firmly allied with Rome. Monte Tifata itself, with its
famous sanctuary, became Hannibal's base of operations for several
years. When Rome regained Capua and its territory in 211, it wreaked
a selective vengeance, sparing the city's buildings and its territory
but declaring the Campanian plains to be ager publicus, Roman public
property. Extraordinarily, Neapolils' bronze issue was intended to
burnish Capua's greatest assets after their defilement by Hannibal
and to appropriate those assets symbolically on behalf of Rome.


2. New Perspectives on Fourth-Century BCE Akarnanian Coinage (Douglas
Domingo-Forasté, California State University, Long Beach)

*An error with the hyperlink prevents anyone from viewing the
abstract for this paper.


3. Learning from Mistakes: Iconographic and Artistic Errors by Late
Antique Die Engravers (Philip Kiernan, Independent Scholar)

One of the most fundamental questions about Roman coinage is the
extent to which the messages of reverse types were intentional
propaganda on the part of the issuing authority, and to what extent
those messages were understood by those who used the coins. This
paper looks at a rather unorthodox source to shed new light on this
old question – the imitations of the bronze coins of the Gallic
emperor Postumus (A.D. 260-269). In a period when silver coins had
almost been debased to the point of being bronze themselves, Postumus
made the unusual decision to strike large bronze sestertii and double
sestertii. After four years, the experiment was abandoned, but the
need for the fractional coins seems to have remained, with imitations
being struck at local workshops in the Western Empire until at least
A.D. 260. Unlike the more common imitations of contemporary
antoniniani, the imitations of Postumus' bronze coins had a much
larger field on which the die engraver could practice his craft. An
examination of these coins reveals a number of interesting mistakes,
suggesting that even the more talented of the unofficial engravers
had only a minimal understanding of the iconography of the official
coins they copied.



4. Not the Egyptian Type: Denominational Distinctions and the
Selection of Images at the Roman Mint of Alexandria (Sean O'Neil,
Randolph-Macon College)


Much has been made over the extraordinary diversity of individual
types issued from the Roman mint at Alexandria. In choosing to
maintain the closed currency system of their Ptolemaic predecessors,
Roman authorities managed to create an opportunity for the careful
direction of images toward a specific provincial audience. While
several authors and catalogue editors have commented on the
exceptionally broad range of individuals, symbols, monuments, and
deities referenced on the Alexandrian coinage, comparatively little
focus has been placed on the degree of selectivity displayed by Roman
administrators. The mandatory payment of certain taxes in coined
money necessarily established the Alexandrian coinage as the lone
medium for "Roman" ideas and imagery viewed by each and every
provincial, and the ruling authority took full advantage. The
intentional dissemination of certain themes and the appearance of
select imperial family members on particular denominational classes
reflect a keen awareness of the distribution and realms of use for
billon and bronze issues throughout Alexandria and the province. The
distinctions between Greco-Roman and native Egyptian religious
iconography are especially revealing, both in the presence (or lack
thereof) of accompanying Greek legends and in the exclusion of the
latter from the billon denominations that were typically used for
larger transactions in the more Hellenized urban centers. Moreover,
this calculated presentation of native religious symbols and themes
on Alexandrian types can be placed within the broader context of a
pervasive attempt to compel Egyptian provincials to accept a Roman
reinterpretation of their own religious culture.


5. Coins and Meaning: Flavian Case Studies (Sarah E. Cox, Independent
Scholar)

When the study of ancient coins reveals patterns and regularities in
their types and legends, it is natural to infer that they were the
result of planning by a central authority, conceived with a purpose,
often to convey a message to the people. Using examples from the
Flavian period, this paper will look at evidence to support that
thesis as well as grounds to believe that people paid sufficient
attention to what was on their coins to understand the intended
messages. Among the minting patterns in the Flavian period is the
congruence of types and Latin legends on aurei struck for Vespasian
in 70 in both the East and the West. It seems unlikely that very
many, if any, individuals would have noticed this congruence, but
clearly someone was coordinating mint decisions, particularly the use
of Latin legends, empire-wide. Another meaningful, but potentially
unnoticed, decision was to have Vespasian share some precious metal
reverse dies with Titus, but not with Domitian, a distinction that
marked out Titus as his father's colleague in power and his heir
designate. Certain reverse types were targeted for use in particular
regions, such as Pax sacrificing on dupondii of Lugdunum, a type
originally struck at this mint by Galba. In the Flavians' reprise of
the type, the pointed allusion was to Galba's unsuccessful efforts to
establish peace. Lastly, some reverse designs were utilized for
specific denominations, like those of the temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus. Asses struck under Vespasian, regardless of when or where,
depicted the temple before its reconstruction, while sestertii showed
its completed state. Perhaps more readily noticeable to the average
viewer would have been the coin types minted to coincide with
specific occasions. One of numerous cases is the striking of the
laurel tree denarii in 74; because laurel had an apotropaic function,
it was used in the lustrum performed at the conclusion of a census,
precisely the situation in 74. Another is Titus's issuance of the
Restoration bronzes for Vespasian's consecratio, all of which carry
some form of the word restituit, explicitly stating that Titus was
restoring earlier coins. By inserting himself in the numismatic
representations of his predecessors, Titus placed both himself and
his father, the new Divus, in the long stream of history beside a
select group of other worthy individuals. I will conclude with a
discussion of how Nero's reputation is reflected in the treatment of
his coinage, based on coin finds in Pompeii. Of 16 hoards of bronze
coins found there, four of them have substantial quantities of
Neronian coins, but 12 contain none of his coins whatsoever.
Particularly interesting is the hoard of over 1300 bronzes from a bar
in insula 1.8, where Nero's coins amazingly constituted less than 1%.
Recalling Epictetus's directive that coins bearing Nero's portrait
should be thrown out as his character was unacceptable, this hoard
dramatically demonstrates that one bar owner, at least, paid close
attention to his currency and adjusted his actions based on its
images and legends.



6. Minting History: The Fabricated Triumph of Drusus (Robin Greene,
University of Washington)


Drusus, the brother of the emperor Tiberius, was a critical figure in
the Augustan wars against the Germanic tribes until his untimely
death while on campaign in 9 BCE. Popular with the people, the
soldiers and the senate, Drusus was acclaimed by his troops as
imperator and awarded a triumph by the senate; Augustus, however,
intervened and granted him an ovatio and "triumphal honors" only.
Ancient sources agree that this successful and likable member of the
imperial family was never permitted to celebrate a proper triumph.
Fifty years later, the emperor Claudius, Drusus' son, minted a coin
series that clearly features triumphal iconography in commemoration
of Drusus' "triumph" over the Germanic tribes; thus, these coins, I
argue, advertise a fictitious event as historical fact. Moreover,
this series served as a model for Claudius' own triumphal series
issued on the occasion of his triumph for the British campaign, an
operation that was generally regarded as far from meriting such an
accolade (Suet. Claud. 17). In this paper I explore two main issues
implicit in these two series. First, I discuss the various reasons
which prompted Claudius to elevate the ovatio of Drusus to a full
triumph and to produce these parallel representations, most important
among which was his need to legitimize his political position by an
emphasis on the achievements and pedigree of his popular father.
Second, I consider how the numismatic fabrication of a non-historical
event may have been perceived by citizens of Rome and the provinces.


Respondent: Jane Cody, University of Southern California