THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETYREPORT ON THE SESSION OCTOBER 2015 – JUNE 2016

PATRON, OFFICERS AND COUNCIL

PATRONHer Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

PRESIDENTAndrew Burnett

HON. VICE PRESIDENT–

VICE-PRESIDENTSRoger Bland

Chris Howgego

TREASURERAmelia Dowler

c/o/ Dept of Coins and Medals, The British Museum, London WC1B 3DG

SECRETARIESHelen Wang

Sushma Jansaric/o/ Dept of Coins and Medals, The British Museum, London WC1B 3DG

info@numismatics.org.uk

LIBRARIANRobert Thompson

c/o The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB

WEBSITEhttp://royalnumismaticsociety.org

EDITOR, THE NUMISMATIC CHRONICLEMr M.S. Phillips

PO Box 348, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire SG18 8EQ

EDITOR, SPECIAL PUBLICATIONSMr K. Lockyear

c/o/ Dept of Coins and Medals, The British Museum, London WC1B 3DG

NON-OFFICIATING COUNCIL MEMBERSMartin Allen, Graham Barker, Dario Calomino,Rebecca Darley, Alexandra Magub, Max Tursi,

Philippa Walton, George Watson, Hugh Williams

THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETYORDINARY MEETINGS, OCT 2015 – JUNE 2016

(including lecture programme)

29 October2015 (joint meeting with the British Numismatic Society)LECTURE: Ian Leins, ‘Striking New Art: Celtic Coinage in Britain and Europe’

17 November 2015LECTURE: Ellen Feingold, ‘The Smithsonian’s New Money Gallery’

15 December 2015 – Presentation of the MedalLECTURE: Bernd Kluge, ‘Pound Sterling, English Coins and English Numismatics from a Continental Perspective’

19 January 2015LECTURE: Philippa Walton, ‘Objects of Devotion? Thinking About Coin Use at Romano-British Temple and Shrine Sites’

16 February 2015LECTURE: Jonathan Callaway, ‘The Life and Banknotes of W.H. Lizars’

15 March 2015 – Two Student/Early Career LecturesLECTURE: Beverly Straube, ‘ Coins and Exonumia Excavated on the c.1607-1624 Site of James Fort, USA; and Benjamin Hellings, ‘The Economic Integration of North-West Europe During the Roman Period’

19 April 2015LECTURE: Clare Rowan, ‘Iconology, New Media and the Numismatist: Approaching Coin Iconography in the 21st Century’

17 May 2015LECTURE: Robin Hill, ‘Transition Town Currencies’

21 June 2015 – Annual General Meeting, President’s AddressLECTURE: Andrew Burnett, ‘Coinage in Rome and the Roman provincial provinces III: The End of the Republic and the Beginning of Empire’

THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY MEDALLIST 2015

Bernd Kluge, the Royal Numismatic Society Medallist 2015, receiving the medal from Andrew Burnett (President)

Awarding the medal at the Ordinary Meeting of the Society on 15 December 2015, the President said:

Today it is my great pleasure to present the RNS medal to Professor Dr Bernd Kluge, for many years the Keeper of the Berlin State Coin Cabinet and himself an outstanding scholar of medieval numismatics.

Kluge’s career began with the arrival of the young Bernd as the newest member of the Berlin Coin Cabinet in 1972, the institution to which he was to devote no less than 42 years until his retirement in September of last year. In 1988 he became its deputy director, and then its Director a few years later, a position he held until his retirement.

The mere dates obscure the momentous history of Germany and Berlin during those long, difficult, years. In those days, as now, the Berlin coin cabinet was located on the Tiber Island, but then it was only a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall and in easy sight of the Vopos, the border guards at Friedrichstrasse who would happily have opened fire and often did so, as you all know. The cabinet was an isolated institution acquiring virtually nothing and doing its best just to keep open and re-build its library (never returned by the Russians). So academic links had a political value to all of us in the numismatic community, far beyond their intellectual significance. I remember visiting for some weeks in the early 80s, when the warmth of the greeting from colleagues at the Cabinet stood in sharp contrast to the interview in a metal box that I had endured the day before, on my arrival at the airport; in those days even the letters

my little children sent me were opened by the censor and their little pictures carefully examine stamped. And I was only visiting. The experience of living there the whole time was something else.

The Wall came down and things got better, but in the euphoria of unification and its aftermath, it was Bernd Kluge’s job to re-establish the Berlin collection as a major international cabinet. This job had its physical and intellectual aspects. After decades of neglect, the museums were falling to pieces and a massive building programme between 1998 and 2006 saw the rebuilding of the coin cabinet. But the world had changed: the financial and collecting climate remained difficult, the internet had been invented and there was increasing need for sponsorship.

Once the rebuilding was completed, the cabinet began to construct a web site which now has tens of thousands of objects on line. There is a now permanent exhibition occupying several rooms on the top floor of the museum. All of this has been achieved with limited resources, a total staff of only 4 curators for one of the world’s greatest collections, and a total less than 10 persons in all.

Professor Kluge had already begun the publication of a new journal Berliner Numismatischer Forschungen in 1987 and this turned into major series of monographs which has now reached no. 11. This is now complemented by an additional series Das Kabinett devoted to publishing the Museum’s material. Colloquia were organised and the Cabinet made its first major acquisition since the 1930s, with the Friedrich Stefan collection. The decision to hold the International Numismatic Congress in Berlin in 1997, an event in which I was privileged to participate, was a wonderful recognition of what had changed and what was being achieved: but it was of course more work (not least the editing of the 1488pp of the Proceedings)!

Given all these pre-occupations, Bernd Kluge’s own publication record is remarkable. By our reckoning there are over 200. Don’t worry I won’t read them all out! But let me mention some of the major books:

SCBI 39 State Museum Berlin, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo Norman and Hiberno-Norse Coins (Oxford, 1987).

Deutsche Münzgeschichte von der späten Karolingerzeit bis zum Ende der Salier (ca. 900 bis 1125) (Sigmaringen, 1991).

Numismatik des Mittelalters. Band 1: Handbuch und Thesaurus Nummorum Medii Aevi, (Vienna, 2007). ‘It is well constructed and clear, and it displays wide learning and sound judgment. Altogether a miracle of compression’ (Michael Metcalf, NC 2008, p. 489)

Am Beginn des Mittelalters. Die Münzen des karolingischen Reiches 751–814. Pippin, Karlmann, Karl der Große (Das Kabinett 15), (Berlin, 2014). ‘A full discussion by Bernd Kluge of all the coins of Pippin and Charlemagne in the Berlin collection, probably the best in the world, with full colour illustrations and discussion of types, mints, etc. Fantastic!’ (Simon Coupland).

For achievements such as these Bernd Kluge was appointed an Honorary Professor of Medieval Numismatics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and a few years ago he was awarded the Archer M. Huntington Medal of the American Numismatic Society. It is only right that we, the Royal Numismatic Society, should now honour him for all that he has done for our subject, and I so I am happy now to present the medal for 2015 to him.

Andrew Burnett

15 December 2015

In accepting the medal, Bernd Kluge said:

When Andrew Burnett so kindly wrote to me in the early part of this year that I was to be presented with the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society, I was quite surprised. I value traditions highly and consider today’s distinction by the oldest - and perhaps most famous -Numismatic Association in the world to be a great honor. I am myself a member of the Numismatic Society of Berlin which, while founded in 1848 and thus 12 years later than the RNS, is nonetheless the third oldest in Europe and the oldest in Germany. Thus if you think that I am not undeserving of this award, I can assure you that, in me, you have found an honoree who regards the RNS and its traditions very highly. Each time I stand in the library of the Coin Cabinet before the long row of the Numismatic Chronicle volumes and leaf through these impressive volumes (which also look quite impressive just from the outside), I am filled with veneration for this truly unique journal and the society which supports it. As of today, I am bound to it even more strongly, and for this I offer my heartfelt thanks.

In considering what I could offer you today as the RNS-Medallist lecture, I came upon the idea that perhaps an outsider’s view of English medieval numismatics might interest you, and that I could combine this with a look back at my own (modest) personal experience in this field. I am able to do this in English thanks to Fabian Halbich, a young German colleague, who took on the translation of this text. My own English would be too shabby. If, in spite of this, I should make an odd phonetic mistake, I ask for your kind understanding. At this age one does not learn a great deal more.

Professor Dr Kluge then presented his paper ‘Pound Sterling, English Coins and English Numismatics from a Continental Perspective’

When I was a boy of about twelve, the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was one of my favorite books. Whenever the subject in the novel turned to money, the talk was always of piasters and many “pounds sterling”. It was clear to me what a piaster was, but no one could really explain to me what a “pound sterling” was, and so in my imagination I came up with my own explanation. I knew the word “pound,” was a term used for the weight of five hundred grams. But what was “sterling”? It had to be valuable, and had to be something that was weighed, otherwise it would not be called a “pound”. Butter, salt, sugar or flour in five-hundred-gram packages was quite a large

amount, but sterling would have to be a great deal more valuable, somewhat like gold or spices probably, which I knew (from other adventure stories) came mostly from India and cost a lot of money. So after much thought, I came to the conclusion that sterling might be a kind of “gold dust with spices”, perhaps with a peppery taste. But why Robinson and his crew would carry a hundred pounds of “gold dust with spices” around to use as money, when it was certainly terribly heavy, I could still not quite figure out. Oh well, I thought, that was a long time ago and, besides, Robinson Crusoe was Scottish. And Scots were known to be miserly, they lived together with the English on an island, from which they sailed around the world in their ships, and probably wanted to keep a close eye on their money!

Now this story is not intended to propose a new meaning for the term “sterling,” or to show that I from childhood already considered myself a numismatist - the exact opposite would be more accurate. I first discovered numismatics following my university years, and not due to pure inclination but rather, at least in the beginning, owing purely to a need to earn money. But after I ended up - more due to coincidence than to any plan - in the “Coin Cabinet” of the State museum in Berlin and in numismatics more than forty years ago, another coincidence quickly brought me into contact with the world of English numismatics. I can remember quite clearly that in the summer of nineteen-seventy-three I was directed to answer a letter sent to the Münzkabinett Berlin from Mr. Mark Blackburn of London, in which this gentleman had asked whether there were, in Berlin, coins from the Watchet mint. At that time I had never heard of “Watchet”, let alone a Watchet mint, and had to first do some research. That gave me some basic knowledge of English medieval numismatics. No, we did not have any such coins, and I learned that the mint in Watchet was active only around the turn of the millennium under the kings Ethelred II and Cnut, and that these coins are all very rare today. At that time Watchet was called “Wecedport;” today it is a little port town of about 4,000 residents in Somerset (but of course you know that!). Mark Blackburn thanked us, published his corpus on Watchet-coins a year later and sent me an offprint. We continued to write to one another. At that time Mark was about 20 years old, and I was five years older. Our common interest was the coin hoards around the Baltic Sea from the 11th Century, in which thousands of coins from both Germany and England were represented. Berlin has a very good collection of English coins from the 10th and 11th Centuries from these hoards. Since Mark soon assumed responsibility for the publication of the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles in association with the British Academy, a plan was soon developed by him, the unforgettable Michael Dolley and myself to publish the Berlin inventory as part of the SCBI series. That may sound banal today, but during those Cold War times in Europe it was anything but easy. The Coin Cabinet belonged to the State Museum in East Berlin and thus to the GDR. England was considered by the GDR to be a “foreign capitalist power” [i. e. enemy]. To travel there, and actually go so far as to publish books, was practically impossible. Nonetheless, we managed to bring it off, and the book was issued in nineteen-eighty-seven as volume 36 of the SCBI series. On the title page, following “Published for the British Academy and the State Museum of Berlin,” we were required to add “Capital of the GDR”. We were happy to make this minor

political concession. Anyone reading it today may be surprised at this odd phrase, but you have no idea what all had to be done “behind the curtains” to bring about this publication.

Thanks to the Berlin SCBI volume I had four weeks of study time in England, which took me to London, Oxford and Cambridge and, on the weekends, around the Cambridge area in Mark’s funky old car. Thanks to those weeks of study, I made the acquaintance of numerous representatives from the world of English numismatics in the 1980s. I must mention two in particular who are no longer with us: Philip Grierson and Mark Blackburn. One was a major figure in our “guild”, and the other would certainly have become that as well, if he had not been called away before his time.

Philip Grierson (born 1910, died 2006) had the great privilege of spending his professional life in the service of learning, and remaining healthy well into an old age. The banality of everyday life was spared him in the cloistered atmosphere of the Gonville and Caius Colleges, and he was not required to take care of a family. He used these unique circumstances to produce unique achievements. When the roll is called of the greatest 20th Century numismatist, there is a high likelihood that PG will be among them. In the field of medieval numismatics he was, in my opinion, in a league by himself; and volume I of his Medieval European Coinage, from 1986, represents to me simply the best book ever written about medieval numismatics.

In the book, PG generously gave Mark Blackburn (born 1953, died 2011) credit for equal co-authorship, although Blackburn drafted only the Anglo-Saxon chapter and participated as an editor. In addition to a recognition of the service rendered, this was probably also the gracious gesture of the master for his successor, or of the father for his son, because Mark Blackburn was in a manner of speaking the numismatic protégée of PG, who had recognized his extraordinary talents, encouraged him, and enabled the jurist to make the professional leap into numismatics. Unfortunately, Mark Blackburn was not granted the opportunity to found his own sort of “era” like his mentor Grierson. He died at the age of only 58, at a time when not all of Philip Grierson’s great works had even been written. In contrast to PG, who was primarily involved in producing his own work, MB integrated a more strongly charitable vein into his work, and wore himself out working as editor of the SCBI series, the British Numismatic Journal, as well as working with the Fitzwilliam Museum. It seems to me only right and appropriate here in London, where he and I first met in person in 1981, to remember him today.

But enough now of personal remembrances: I want to speak in general about the continental view of England. This will also have a personal aspect, because it will be my spectacles through which we will be looking. I don’t know whether English numismatists (with the exception, as always, of Philip Grierson) have any interest in German medieval coins. If they do, they should be horror-struck, and ought to praise the almighty for the fact that he did not give them this numismatic chaos, but rather such clear, legible coins easily categorized according to type, mint, and mint master – at least since the mint reform of (probably) 975 initiated by King Edgar. We need not

concern ourselves today with the years before that: it takes a certain amount of time until something can emerge which is as complete as is English coinage after 975.

While France sank into the chaos of immobilized feudal coinage, and Germany produced a never-ending cornucopia of badly-minted coins with illegible inscriptions, English mint masters everywhere in the service of the state quietly went about the business of manufacturing visually identical, cleanly minted coins displaying their names and the abbreviations for the mints. Only every six years, and later every three years, came a bit of excitement, because they were required to use new dies with different images. In this process it sometimes happened that old dies were accidentally combined with new ones and mules resulted, throwing English numismatists into a tizzy. From time to time the discovery of a new hoard intensified this frenzy, when it revealed a new mint master or – at the veritable earthquake level on the frenzy scale – even a previously unknown mint. This then leads to minor revisions which become necessary in the tastefully-furnished English coin world, otherwise unchanged for centuries, while the Germans and French stand in desperation before their great heaps of numismatic furniture and attempt to extract at least a few respectable furnishings to adorn their numismatic salons, by which one will not be too terribly embarrassed.

Under the last Norman Kings, the end of the 11th Century saw a gradual spread of inefficiency in English mints, and the political anarchy under Stephen (1135-1154) was reflected in the equally anarchic coinage: numismatically, England had suddenly fallen to the status level of France and Germany! Fortunately this state of affairs did not last long, and in 1158, with the new Tealby type, Germany and France once again received a lesson on how one could overcome coin crises in England and correct a desolate coinage with a decisive measure. Henry II (1154-1189), the first Plantagenet on the English throne, thereby assumed an impressive numismatic posture. In terms of mint technology, however, the Tealby remained below average. Therefore in 1180 it was time to “go one step further”, and the sterling was invented! Now, at last, we can clear up young Bernd’s confusion about his “gold dust with a peppery taste,” because in addition to the sterling and the no less famous “sterling silver” (925/1000), the “pound sterling” was invented. It consisted of 240 sterlings or 5.400 grains or 348 grams sterling silver. Thus, from Henry Plantagenet all the way to Robinson Crusoe, not much had changed. That’s the way to do coinage!

For English numismatists, the first sterling type Short Cross created completely new challenges, and demanded from them a great deal of acumen. Since it remained completely unchanged from 1180 until 1247 - over 67 years - in image and inscription, Henry II’s two successors, Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199) and King John (1199-1216), are not to be found on any coins. Such a case is quite unheard of in medieval Europe. Two kings in a row without coins! With the next type, the Long Cross introduced by Henry II in 1247 and minted for over 30 years until 1279, things are not quite as complicated, because of the shorter circulation period, lasting only a couple of years into the reign of King Edward I (1272-1307). With the third type, the Edwardian sterling type struck from 1279 until 1377 in the period of the three Edwards, it once again gets highly complicated to distinguish the three Edwards from one another and

to determine the coins’ chronological order. With the Edwardian sterling, the elegance of the die engraving and the advanced embossing technology - still absent in the Short and Long Cross periods - finally returned to the coins as well.

It appears to me to be part of the high art of English medieval numismatics to attain the capacity to correctly identify the sterlings of the period 1180 to 1377. Several generations of English numismatists worked to develop a very subtle classification system which a German numismatist can only regard with reverent wonder, but probably never thoroughly understand. I have attempted to identify with this system the sterlings hold in the Berlin Coin Cabinet and those I have come across from German coin finds – and in most cases I have failed completely. One problem is that many coins are simply too poorly preserved; another is that the system, based on (in some cases miniscule) variations of letter forms, crowns and punctuation symbols, surpasses my level of numismatic understanding. I am forced to confess that as a sterling numismatist I am probably a failure, but I suspect that others have the same problems, and simply refuse to admit it. Sometimes I fall prey to the suspicion that the English numismatic world does not fully understand the system itself, and deliberately made it so complicated so that no one could understand it. But of course that can’t be true, and I hasten to dismiss this suspicion. Where then, I ask you, do I find the master who can still teach me the true path to the correct identification of sterling coinage?

With the huge ransom payment for King Richard, taken prisoner in Austria upon his return from the crusades, it is suspected that millions of sterling coins entered circulation in Europe at the end of the 12th Century. The sterling thus began its international career, and England supplied Western Europe with development assistance in the creation of new currency structures. The sterling enjoyed particular popularity in the Netherlands and Western Germany, where it not only turns up in many coin hoards, but was also often imitated. It is unlikely that such direct English influence on the coinage of Europe can be seen in any other period.

With the Edwardian sterling we have arrived at the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), the time of the battles among mounted knights, the English longbow, the Black Prince and the Maid of Orléans. At stake was nothing less than the political leadership of continental Europe, contested between England and France. In the end, England had won all of the major battles, obtained huge sums in ransom money, but lost the war. It was forced to vacate its great holdings in France and retreated to the island and its splendid isolation.

The guerre de cent ans was not fought exclusively by military means. As in all wars, finance played a decisive role. France in particular, which up to 1428 experienced one defeat after another and was on the verge of disaster, placed its currency in the service of the war with brutal excess. Through constant, more or less secretive debasing of the coinage, permanent inflation was generated and the country was squeezed dry. While the ups and downs in the quality of French coins practically mirror the progress of the war, English coins showed no effects of the war whatsoever! On the contrary: at the war’s mid-period England inaugurated (after the sterlings) its second revolutionary monetary renewal of the late medieval monetary system. In 1344 it introduced with the

nobles a whole new dimension to the coinage. The noble, with more than 7 grams of gold, represented the largest and heaviest gold coin of the Middle Ages up to that date. The name was appropriately chosen, for they were in fact the numismatic high nobility of the medieval era. Contemporaries were certainly able to decipher the hidden symbolism of the coin weights and coin images more easily than we can do today. I am convinced that the noble was not simply a new gold coin attracting much attention, but also conceived as a programmatic, upscale-English and thus even greater humiliation of France, the great enemy. Its weight reminded the French that their own golden ecu, brought into the world with much pomp in 1337, was nothing more than “small change” in comparison to the noble. The image on the coin face, of the victorious king standing on a ship, reminded them of the great defeat they had suffered at the hands of the English fleet in 1340 in the harbor of Bruges. In the inscription, Edward III indicated to them that he is not merely King of England, but naturally of France as well. The coin reverse consciously resembles those of French gold coins, but is even showier and replaces the French lily with the English lion. The accompanying inscription Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum ibat is taken from the Book of Luke and is intended to make the statement: Just as Jesus ignored the cries of the Jews and went his own way, so little will England allow the turmoil with the French to distract it from its victorious path. Have you ever considered the beautiful nobles of Edward III with this interpretation?

Even if the interpretation strikes you as somewhat presumptuous, you will certainly subscribe to this summary of my presentation: English coins are the most elegantly and skillfully crafted, the English coinage is the most effectively organized, and English money seen as a whole is the best from medieval Europe. In the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles England produced the largest, in Medieval European Coinage the most important research work on medieval numismatics, and in Philip Grierson it brought forth the genre’s reigning Master. Could one say any more about the numismatic glory of a small island?

THE SECRETARIES’ REPORT TO THEANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 16 JUNE 2015

FELLOWSHIP

2016 (2015)Ordinary Fellows UK 329 (332)

Overseas 324 (331)Student Fellows UK 20 (18)

Overseas 8 (7)Life Fellows UK 10 (11)

Overseas 7 (7)Honorary Fellows UK 16 (18)

Overseas 8 (8)Institutional Fellows UK 15 (14)

Overseas 68 (64)Total 762 (810)

Council regretted to report the deaths of the following Fellows:

Honorary FellowsMiss M.M Archibald, UK, 1962, Hon 1996, Mrs J. Cargill Thompson [Jennifer Warren], UK, 1959, Hon 2010Prof. H.B. Mattingly, UK, 1956, Hon 2005

Ordinary FellowsMr R. Baker, UK, 1978Mr P.J. Casey, UK, 1968Mr B. Grover, UK, 1947Mr T.L. Taylor, UK, 1970Mr .L. Villaronga Garriga, Spain, 1965Mr P. Woodhead, UK, 1962Mr I.R. Young, Australia, 1987

1 new Honorary Fellow and 18 ordinary fellows have been elected (and paid subscriptions):

New Honorary FellowMr R.H.J. Ashton, UK, 1971

New Ordinary FellowsMr T. Ballen, USAProf. C.H. Caldwell, USAMr M. Carter, UKMr H. Cloke, USAMr S. Horne, UKMr E.R. Johnson, UK

Mr H. Jongeling, NetherlandsMr N. Kallergis, BelgiumMr A. Maisano, USAMr R.D. McKay, UKMr N.P. Murphy, UKMrs S.M. Porter, UKMr K. Sammut, USAMr J.R. Saul, UKMr I. Stainton, UKMr D.A. Thomas, UKMiss M.C.Vrij, UKMr J. Yates, UK

New Institutional FellowsNational Museum Scotland Library, UKIsrael Antiquities Authority Library, IsraelUniversity of Seville, SpainAnglo American Book Company, ItalyCentre E.B.de l’Iramat, University of Orleans, France

Resignations of Ordinary FellowsMr F.E. Adams, UKDr C.J. Griffiths, UKMr H. Kreindler, U.S.AMr P.M. Lyons, UKMr P.J. O’Connor, U.S.A

Resignations of Institutional Fellows-

43 Ordinary Fellows have been removed.

THE MEDAL OF THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY 2016It was decided award the 2016 Medal to Pere Pau Ripollès.

PRIZES AWARDED BY THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY 2015

The Lhotka Prize: awarded to Richard Kelleher for A History of Medieval Coinage in England (2015).

The Parkes Weber Prize: awarded to Michael Economou for his essay on The Coinage of the First Jewish Revolt.

The Shamma Prize: No prize was awarded in the 2015-2016 session.

The Gilljam Prize: The prize will next be awarded in 2016-2017 session.GRANTS AWARDED FROM ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY FUNDS

The Kreitman Fund: £400 to Jens Jakobsson (Seleucid coins of Bactria), £900 to Xiang Wan (Central Asian coins), £1500 to Sutapa Sinha (Islamic coins of Central Asia).

The Lowick Fund: £500 to Sutapa Sinha (Islamic coins of Central Asia), £790 to Fabrizio Sinisi (Parthian Coin Project), £645 to Suchanda Ghosh (R.B. Whitehead).

The Martin Price Fund: £915 to Antonino Crisa (Sicilian coins).

The CNG Roman & Byzantine Fund: £1200 to Marco Werkmann (Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire Project).

ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY – SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS

SP 53:  Tony Goodwin and Rika Gyselen, Arab-Byzantine Coins from the Irbid Hoard. Including a new introduction to the series and a study of the Pseudo-Damascus mint (2015), ix, 297 pp., BW illustrations throughout. £60.

THE PRESIDENT’S REVIEW OF THE YEAR

Welcome, all, to this year’s AGM, when we celebrate the Society’s 180th anniversary.

Founded in 1836 the RNS is the world’s first numismatic society, as I was able to point out when I recently attended the 175th anniversary of the Royal Belgian Numismatic Society; but, of course, the Belgians were ‘royal’ long before we were!

I am glad to be able to report to this year’s (2016) AGM that the Society is in a good state, both in terms of its finances and its activities.

The finances are described below by the Treasurer, and show that the Society is in a reasonably stable financial state. Many thanks, as ever, go to Tony Merson for preparing the accounts for us, and also to Richard Abdy for acting as independent examiner. Membership is at a healthy level, at 762, rather lower than last year but the drop can be explained by a more ruthless cull than normal of non-payers. However, the subscription has not changed for ten years, and Council has recommended the small increase, which you have just approved.

It is, as each year, my sad duty to report on losses from our Society. This year we have been notified of the deaths of several well-known RNS Fellows, most of whom had been Fellows for many years. They include Mr R. Baker, UK (1978), Mr T.L. Taylor, UK (1970), Mr I.R. Young, Australia, 1987, and, perhaps better known to us, Mr B. Grover, UK (1947) and Mr P. Woodhead, UK (1962). Peter’s great contribution to British numismatics is being celebrated more fully by our sister Society, the British Numismatic Society, and here I shall confine my remarks to others, more associated with the RNS.

Leandre Villaronga i Garriga (1965) (1919-20 July 2015) died aged 96, after a lifetime of marvellous contributions to the understanding of the coinage of ancient Spain, He was largely self-taught and had built up an enormous photofile of over 60,000 coins, on which he based his many studies, particularly those on the Punic coinages of Spain and on locally produced Iberian coinages of the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC. He was the founder of Acta Numismatica in 1970, and received many honours: an honorary doctorate from University of Cologne in 1981, the ANS medal in 1993 and the RNS Medal in 1989.

John Casey (1968). We have just heard the sad news that John died on 10 June 2016. He had been a Fellow of the Society for many years, winning our Lhotka Memorial prize in 1980 for his Coinage in Roman Britain (1980), and he had also published a volume of the finds at Sinop (Sinope) in Turkey in the SP series: John Casey, with Melih Arslan, Richard Brickstock and Julia Agnew, Sinope: A Catalogue of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine Coins in Sinop Museum (Turkey) and Related Historical and Numismatic Studies (SP 44: 2010). He will perhaps be remembered best for two things: his contributions to our understanding of the coinages of Carausius and Allectus, and for his methodological handbooks: the classic ‘Casey and Reece’ (Coins and the Archaeologist), first published in 1974 (reprinted in 1988); and also for his

Roman Coinage in Britain (1980), and his Understanding Ancient Coins (London, 1986), all bibles for many students.

Jennifer Cargill-Thompson (1959) died on 16 January 2016. Jennifer, better known professionally by her maiden name Jennifer Warren, published many studies on the Hellenistic coinage of ancient Greece, which culminated in her The Bronze Coinage of the Achaian Koinon, the Currency of a Federal Ideal (RNS SP 42, 2007). She was elected an Honorary Fellow in 2010.

Marion Archibald (1962) died on 23 April 2016. For more than a generation her name was synonymous with the study of Anglo-Saxon coins at the British Museum, embracing the publication of many hoards, sylloges, excavation coins, scientific projects and exhibitions. She was, of course, intimately involved in the affairs of the Society, being Secretary on no less than two occasions (1971-76 and 1992-94), and encouraging the development of scientific studies (SP 23; Marion M. Archibald and Michael R. Cowell, Metallurgy in Numismatics, vol. 3 (1993)). Her 70th birthday was marked by the publication of Coinage And History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500-1250: Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald (Leiden, 2006), edited by B.J. Cook and G. Williams, a fine honorary volume, which includes a short appreciation of her achievements and bibliography up to that date. She received many other honours, being elected FSA in 1974, and awarded the Jeton de Vermeil of the French Numismatic Society in 1988. We elected her an Honorary Fellow in 1996, and as our medallist in 2011.

Harold (H.B.) Mattingly (1956) (1923-23 August 2015), or ‘young Mattingly’ as he was known, even in old age, to distinguish him from his father, was an ancient historian who also contributed extensively to numismatics, both Greek, classical and Hellenistic, and Roman, Republican and imperial. He often took unorthodox positions, in particular regarding the chronology of the fifth century BC, for which he was inappropriately and – as it was ultimately shown – wrongly criticised. One unfortunate side effect of this controversy was the way it overshadowed his many other achievements, in particular his series of fundamental articles on the moneyers of the Roman Republic. Many of his works can be found in the two volumes of his reprinted papers: H.B. Mattingly, The Athenian Empire Restored. Epigraphic and Historical Studies (Ann Arbor, 1996), and From Coins to History: Selected Numismatic Studies (Ann Arbor, 2004). He was our President from 1999 to 2004, and an Honorary Fellow from 2005.

I am very grateful to all the members of Council who give their time and expertise so freely to the Society. This year, three members are retiring – Dario Calomino, Philippa Walton and George Watson, the last after only a short spell since he has landed himself a job in Frankfurt, on which we congratulate him warmly. The officers of the Society take on the main burden of running the Society and they, as all members of Council, take on their functions voluntarily and in addition to their other activities, and they are not, of course, paid anything at all. I am especially grateful to our Treasurer Amelia Dowler, and to our Secretaries Sushma Jansari and Helen Wang, who - as you all know - run the Society. They shoulder the administrative load (with the support of

Henry Lythe), and I am especially grateful to them not just for their efficiency and effectiveness, but also for their seemingly endless patience and continuous cheerfulness. This year, as you will have seen from the ballot paper, Helen is standing down from the Secretaryship and I would like to thank her most warmly on your behalf for everything she has done to further the well-being of the Society over the last five years. We wish her successor, Megan Gooch, well.

I would also like to thank the other members of the Finance and Investment sub-committee – Tristan Hillgarth, Eric McFadden and Chris Howgego, who so generously lend their expertise to ensuring the proper supervision of the Society’s funds.

The academic programme of lectures has, as usual, been a rich and varied diet, ranging from the classical period to the 21st century. It would be invidious to single out any individual papers, but we have of course enjoyed hearing our medallist, Professor Bernd Kluge from Berlin. The recent initiative of having a student lecture was fulfilled with great accomplishment this year by two speakers, Ben Hellings and Beverley Straube. Applications for this slot continue at a healthy level, a good sign for the future of the subject.

Richard Ashton, Marcus Phillips and Susan-Tyler Smith continue as editors of the Numismatic Chronicle, which seems to get bigger and better every year. Kris Lockyear, with Susan Tyler-Smith, is the editor of SPs, and, although the year has seen only one publication – Arab-Byzantine coins from the Irbid Hoard, by Tony Goodwin and Rika Gyselen -, several more are in the pipeline. We have elected Richard Ashton to an Honorary Fellowship, in recognition of the many years he has – so far – fulfilled his office; he cannot be here today so we shall make the presentation in December.

Robert Thompson has continued to take on the duties of Librarian of the joint RNS/BNS Library housed in the Warburg Institute, a commitment for which we are very grateful. At Council we have started to review the future of Library, since the Library has not been reviewed for some years, and this is long overdue.

Every year we award a medal and a number of prizes. This year the Society’s medal has been awarded to Prof. Pere Pau Ripollès, of the University of Valencia in Spain, who has done so much to raise the level of numismatics in that country, and beyond. The award ceremony will take place in December and the citation will appear in next year’s Proceedings.

This year’s prizes have been awarded as follows:

The Lhotka Prize (for the best publication for the ‘elementary student of numismatics’) was awarded to Richard Kelleher for A History of Medieval Coinage in England (2015).

The Gilljam Prize (awarded every two years for the best contribution to the numismatics of the third century before the reform of Diocletian) has been

awarded to Aleksander Bursche for ‘The Battle of Abritus, the Imperial Treasury and Aurei in Barbaricum’ (NC 2013).

The Parkes Weber Prize (for the best essay by a young author) was awarded to Michael Economou for his essay on The Coinage of the First Jewish Revolt.

We were able to make a number of financial grants, as usual, from the funds we hold which have been very generously donated to the Society to promote research, and we are very grateful to the donors. In addition, we made provision for a number of special grants to assist some of those attending last autumn’s International Numismatic Conference, held in Taormina, and it was gratifying to see so many younger people there.

The Student/Early Career Lectures, the grants made to enable younger scholars to attend the INC, our financial support to the Money and Medals Network are a few of the visible signs of our commitment to promoting and advancing numismatics by encouraging and supporting the next generation of numismatists.

Last but not least, we should thank our Hon. Fellow Philip Skingley, not only for making these premises available to us, but also for taking a leading role in all aspects of our publications and for cheerfully continuing with the seemingly endless party arrangements, such as that we shall shortly enjoy.

Andrew Burnett

President

22 June 2016