Ancient Coinages: Theory and Practice
(focusing on Thrace and the Black Sea Region)
Thrace and the Black Sea Region is an intensive crossing point of peoples, cultures, roads, and processes. The area provides the researchers with an exceptional opportunity to examine a variety of ancient pre-monetary forms and coinages. Due to this, the Sofia Numismatic School (SN School) joins the tradition of organizing Numismatic seminars by choosing a focus, particularly on this area.
By introducing the participants to the historical context and the research concepts on the chosen region, the lecturers will concentrate on the numismatic materials, the technical work with them and their interpretation as historical sources. The exploration of the theoretical base of Numismatics will be combined with practice on specimens representing diverse numismatic concepts and forms.
The SN School aims to support young researchers to acquire and develop further expertise in Ancient Numismatics. The seminar will concentrate also on the implementation of innovative digital methodology and the concept of Digital Numismatics. Within its program, the participants will explore and elaborate on their potential to support the research of traditional numismatic questions and to open new study horizons.
Another accent of the SN School is the opportunity for young researchers to study and collaborate with leading international lecturers and to meet and exchange experiences with graduate and postgraduate students from different educational systems.
François de Callataÿ is an expert in ancient Greek numismatics broadly speaking, with a high focus on methodology, who has devoted a substantial amount of his work to Thracian coinages. He is currently involved in several digital projects. One is already available: Fontes Inediti Numismaticae Antiquae (FINA wiki: https://fina.oeaw.ac.at/wiki/index.php/FINA_Wiki). Hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, it integrates 4,000 letters and many other unprinted documents produced by the Republic of Medals till 1800. The website allows a lot of queries through dozens of filters producing automatic statistics and maps. Two other projects launched in the frame of the ERC Silver (advanced grant: PI Francis Albarède/ person in charge of the dbases: Caroline Carrier) are in their initial phases: a database for all the die-studies produced so far for Greek and Roman coinages; and another for all the Greek cases of overstruck coins.
Ilya Prokopov is a Professor in the field of ancient numismatics, coin circulation in the Bulgarian lands, the history of money, exchange and trade relations in Antiquity, counterfeiting of ancient coins and the analysis of coin metals and stamps. He published a number of coin finds from the Bulgarian lands, as well as numismatic collections of Bulgarian museums. He teaches numismatics, expertise and evaluation of cultural values at SWU "Neofit Rilski" and at UniBIT in Sofia. He is the director of the Laboratory for Expertise and Evaluation of Archaeological and Numismatic Values at SWU "Neofit Rilski" in Blagoevgrad.
Dilyana Boteva is a Professor in ancient history and Thracian studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”, whose research covers a wide range of problems of the history and culture of ancient Thrace. She applies a semiotic approach to the analysis of diverse sources, and when working with iconographic monuments she emphasizes on the implementation of databases and quantitative methods.
Vladimir Stolba is an expert in various aspects of Black Sea archaeology, ancient history and numismatics where his primary geographical foci were the northern and western Black Sea coasts. Drawing on his interdisciplinary background, he currently works on chronology, typology and metrology of Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Provincial coinages produced in the Propontis. As a member of the German Corpus Nummorum Online team, he has also developed an expertise in digital processing of the numismatic data.
Ulrike Peter is working on ancient numismatics in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her main research interests lie in the ancient coinage and history of money in Thrace as well as in the neighbouring regions. Her research field includes also ancient iconography. She runs the Corpus Nummorum project dedicated to the digital transformation of coins and coin types for the ancient regions of Moesia, Thrace, the Troad and Mysia in accordance to FAIR principles. She is a member of the Steering Committee of 'nomisma.org' for the creation of internationally recognized numismatic authority data.
Valentina Grigorova-Gencheva is an expert in the field of Roman provincial coinage, coin circulation in the Bulgarian lands, the history of money, exchange and trade relations in Antiquity, iconography and cults in Roman times. She teaches history of finance and investment in precious metals at VUZF University and "Cultural Heritage: Market and Investment" at Sofia University. Founder and director of the Gold and Numismatics Directorate at Fibank.
Julia Tzvetkova is an Associate Professor in ancient history and Thracian studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Her research focuses on Thracian history, politics and culture (2nd - 1st millennium BC), the interactions with other classical Greek and Roman communities, Thracian places of worship, historical geography of ancient Thrace, GIS applications in history and archaeology, Greek and Thracian numismatics.
Lily Grozdanova is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Ancient History and Thracology at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”. Her main research interests are in the field of digital numismatics and the humanities. Her research is in the field of Roman provincial coinage and the development of the Roman Empire during the period of the "military emperors".
Nicolay Sharankov is a leading expert in Greek and Latin epigraphy and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classical Philology, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. His fields of research include ancient inscriptions from the territory of Bulgaria, social and cultural history and religion of ancient Thrace; prosopography of the Balkan Roman provinces; mobility of people and cults in Hellenistic and Roman world.
- Introductory lecture: Thrace and the Black Sea Region (Dilyana Boteva and Vladimir Stolba)
- Ancient coins concept (theoretical aspects) (François de Callataÿ)
- Pre-monetary forms discovered in Bulgaria: standards, exchange, denominations, trade (Ilya Prokopov and Valentina Grigorova-Gencheva)
- Archaic & Classical Coinages (Vladimir Stolba and JuliaTzvetkova)
- Hellenistic Coinages: Alexander III (François de Callataÿ and Ilya Prokopov)
- Roman Provincial Coinage in the Perspective of Digital Numismatics (Ulrike Peter and Lily Grozdanova)
- Ancient Metrology (Nicolay Sharankov)
- Study trip to the archaeological site of Pistiros (Archaeological Museum “Prof. Mieczysław Domaradzki”, Septemvri) and study practice with its numismatic collection (15.9.2023).
- Study trip to the Archaeological Museum at Hisarya and practice with its numismatic collection (16.9.2023); visit of the neigbourging archaeological sites.