2012 American Numismatic Society Graduate Summer Seminar

Rick Witschonke, Curatorial Associate at the American Numismatic Society and co-director of the Graduate Summer Seminar, has indicated that the ANS is now taking applications for the 58th Annual Eric P. Newman Graduate Summer Seminar in Numismatics.

This is an excellent opportunity for graduate students in archaeology, art history, classics, history or any other related fields to be exposed to a diverse range of methods and applications in numismatics and to work with one of the finest collections in the world. See the announcement here.

David Gill Receives SAFE Beacon Award

Congratulations to David Gill, who will receive the 2012 SAFE Beacon Award. David was among first scholars to quantify the illicit and unethical trade in trafficked antiquities; his seminal articles (with Chris Chippendale) published in the American Journal of Archaeology were instrumental in raising awareness and sensitivity among the academic community.

David has maintained his publication agenda and in recent years has also taken his case to the public, most notably through his widely read weblog "Looting Matters." In recognition of his public advocacy, it was announced earlier this year that the Archaeological Institute of America would recognize David Gill with the Outstanding Public Service Award at the 2012 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

It is good to see that David is being honored for his years of tireless work by these two awards in 2012.

Moving Again

I had a very productive postdoctoral appointment in the Coin Room at the Yale University Art Gallery for the past couple of years and now it has drawn to a close. I will certainly miss everyone there. In addition to the great people I was able to work with in the Art Gallery and in Classics, it was also a great pleasure to collaborate with the several courses that wished to learn about objects in the collection, to teach my own seminar last fall on a topic that was both fun for me and the students, and to design course-related and numismatic exhibits. We also made great progress on the digitization of the collection and have created photographic records of virtually all of the ancient coins. The next postdoc will get to coordinate the digitization of the medals and other parts of the collection and work with a new group of student employees in the fall.

In August, I am taking up a faculty appointment at Baylor University. I am excited about this new opportunity and look forward to working with my new colleagues, returning to the classroom, and having more time (maybe) for research.

There are many projects that I need to tackle (articles, my book, and a potential excavation project) and so updates to this website are likely to remain infrequent. However, if there is something that anyone would like to see here, I am always open to suggestions.

I think I have shared my new email address and contact information with everyone who needs it. If I inadvertently overlooked anyone, please let me know.

Numismatics and Archaeology in Rome

Sapienza University of Rome is advertising a call for a research poster session for its First International Workshop on Numismatics. The workshop will explore the relationship between coin finds and stratigraphy and other types of context, including the relationship between coin finds and other excavated objects. The call for posters (in Italian) can be found here.

Readers might be interested in reading about some previous conferences and symposia on "contextual numismatics" that were discussed here.

"Contexts and the Contextualization of Coin Finds - An International Colloquium"

"Contextual Numismatics: New Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Methodologies"

And the Coins in Context Colloquium in Frankfurt am Main in October 2007 that published the proceedings in a monograph: Coins in Context I: New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin Finds (Mainz, 2009), edited by H.-M. von Kaenel and F. Kemmers.

"Coin Project" Launched

It has been announced that "Coin Project" has been launched and made available for public use. Among other things, the site allows users to catalogue coins of various types and upload images.

I was invited to test the site several months back and it appeared to have several promising study applications. I have been unable to spend much more time with it than that, but I am sure that I will have cause to use it in the future. The website will no doubt become a source for quick images and will be consulted by researchers, especially now that CoinArchives is available only through paid subscription.

The architect of "Coin Project" discusses it in more detail here.

Finished

I defended my dissertation at the University of Missouri on September 10 and the Ph.D. was officially conferred on December 17, 2010. It's good to be finished, but I still remain incredibly busy. Now there is the pressure to publish aspects of the dissertation as quickly as possible with the aim of preparing monograph after a couple of foundation articles. Add to that work obligations, other research projects, and the intimidating task of finding employment in the present economy.

I will continue to post on various subjects related to numismatics and archaeology as time allows.