“Coin Production and Circulation in Byzantine Greece and Anatolia, 325-750”

Princeton Athens Center

January 13-24, 2025 | Wintersession

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. 

Goals: 

• to equip workshop participants with the tools to explore the nature of coinage in Greece and Turkey during the period of transition;
• to develop strategies for increasing the representation of finds from Greece and Turkey in the FLAME database.

Program: 

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: 

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. 

Funding: 

For participants who are not residents in Athens, Princeton University will provide funding, by way of reimbursement upon presentation of original receipts, 

• towards transportation (economy class, fixed dates);
• a modest stipend towards lodging in Athens for the duration of the workshop.  Workshop participants will be responsible to make their own arrangements for travel and accommodation.

Further Information: 

Any questions about the program should be sent to Alan Stahl at Princeton University, [email protected].