Coin Production and Circulation in Greece and Turkey, 325 to 750 CE, Princeton Athens Center, January 13–24, 2025
The Princeton University Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, in collaboration with the FLAME Project, will offer a workshop and practicum at the Princeton Athens Center, January 13-24, 2025, with a focus on the transition of coinage in the Byzantine heartland between 325 and 750 CE.
FLAME (Framing the Late Antique and early Medieval Economy) is a research project that was founded a decade ago at Princeton University to study and document the coinage of the transitional period from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (c. 325-750). An international team of scholars and students has produced a database currently mapping data on over 11,000 finds containing almost two million coins across Eurasia on its database (https://coinage.princeton.edu). As we have analyzed the results, we have been increasingly concerned about the distribution of published coin finds. The very lands that were at the heartland of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean monetary world, the modern states of Greece and Turkey, are among the least well represented in terms of known coin finds.
Most days of the two-week program will include morning classroom sessions at the Princeton Athens Center, taught by Alan Stahl, Princeton’s Curator of Numismatics and chair of the FLAME Project. The topics to be covered include an overview of numismatic methodology and chronological surveys of the coinages in question, as well as an introduction to the workings of the FLAME database. Visiting scholars will present lectures on coin finds in Greece and Turkey and how they are treated by national antiquities services and museums. There will be visits to numismatic collections in Athens on designated afternoons and an all-day visit to an excavation. As part of the workshop, students will learn to evaluate existing publications of coin finds and will give presentations about them.
Admission to the workshop is competitive. The number of workshop places will be limited: up to four participants from Greek academic institutions, up to four participants from Turkish academic institutions; and up to four participants from Princeton University.
Eligibility
Graduate students (doctoral candidates) currently enrolled at Greek institutions; Graduate students (doctoral candidates) currently enrolled at Turkish institutions; Graduate students (doctoral candidates) currently enrolled at Princeton University; In exceptional cases, consideration will be given to graduate students currently enrolled in MA programs at Greek or Turkish institutions, as well as early-career scholars (not more than three years from the PhD degree). Though some previous experience with numismatics and archaeology is welcome, it is not required.