SURVEY OF NUMISMATIC RESEARCH 2008-2013

The purpose of the Survey 2008-2013 is to provide a critical commentary on recent work. It is not intended to be exhaustive, but a selection of the most important works that have brought new material or new ideas and methods to the field of Numismatics in the past six years. As well as covering the principal works, it also indicates the general directions of thought and changes during the period under consideration. The Survey has an audience that is much wider than the world of numismatic scholarship: it is accessible, interesting and useful also to historians, archaeologists and collectors as well. The Survey is divided into five sections: Antiquity, Western coinages, Oriental and African coinages, Medals and General Numismatics. There is a renewed interest in coins mentioned in the literary and epigraphical sources, and – for the medieval period – for those registered in archives and official documents. As in other fields, the history of collecting has attracted attention, jointly with the history of numismatics and numismatists. There are many works of synthesis, contributions on specific aspects of a single coinage or mint, notices of new types or specimens that came to light in excavations or appeared on the market and in auction catalogues. Metal analyses using different methods are becoming the norm not only to determine the composition of coins but also to help establishing their chronology. In general we can note a new shift to put traditional technical studies into the broader historical framework of political, sociological and economic disciplines. The introduction of Cognitive Numismatics based on interdisciplinary approaches combines the different sources, replacing the traditional reconstructions of Narrative Numismatics. Groups of young economic historians interested in the economic and social function of money are emerging. Especially in the field of medieval numismatics, more room is given to the monetary factor in the reconstruction of economic developments, which shows the fundamental equivalence of the triad established by the economic context, the monetary policy and the production of money. The in-depth examination of this kind of analyses brings out realities previously unnoticed such as for antiquity, the importance of bronze from the premonetary phases of coinage until the later periods. Besides the focus on coin circulation and the economy, ther’is a significant resurgence of interest for monetary iconography. Iconography, which had not received particular attention in numismatics until some decades ago, has now become the topic of numerous articles that examine the relation between the central authority and those who used coins. Other research focuses not only on the symbolism of legitimation but also on the relation between coinage and civic and state identity, differentiating the centers of power – regal or imperial – from peripheral areas. We note in particular not only interest in the individual single coin type but in the whole iconographic program adopted by a specific city or ruler, and there is a deeper understanding of the political reasons (besides the economic ones) for using coin types from other cities or states and from foreign rulers. The scholarly numismatic output reviewed in the present volume of the Survey attests to the breath of innumerable possibilities in which the study of coins and coin-like objects can contribute to our knowledge of the history and cultures of the world.