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The Royal Numismatic Society supports the next generation of numismatists and will host two lectures by the early career community in February 2025.

What

We would love to hear about your:

• Numismatic studies and research at university or in the museums and heritage sector;

• Numismatic research project; or

• Cataloguing, display, or public engagement projects featuring museum numismatic collections.

Who

Submissions are welcomed from:

• Students, early career professionals (if you think you’re early career, we are flexible in our definition!), or people who have recently begun working with numismatics;

• Archaeologists working with numismatic material/coins as archaeological objects;

• International colleagues (the lectures will take place over Zoom).

The RNS supports diversity in numismatic research – feel free to email Courtney if you have any questions about this call.

How

Please send a short proposal by Friday 31 May 2024 to Courtney Nimura at: courtney.nimura@ashmus.ox.ac.uk, with:

• Name

• Job title and institutional affiliation (optional)

• Contact details

• Title

• Short abstract (up to 250 words)

• Short personal biography (up to 100 words)

Please circulate this information to anyone who you think might be interested in this opportunity.

We look forward to hearing from you!

We were very pleased to award the society’s medal to Prof. Sakuraki when he visited the U.K. in December.

Martin Allen presenting the medal to Prof. Sakuraki at the December meeting, held at the Society of Antiquaries

Prof. Sakuraki was kind enough to provide a copy of his acceptance speech for our website:

“It is a great honour for me, as a Japanese, to receive the Royal Numismatic Society medal for 2023, and I would humbly like to express my deep gratitude. When I first received the email informing me of the award, I did wonder, for a moment, if it was a practical joke, but when I realized it was not a joke, I was bowled over. For my work to receive this accolade from the Royal Numismatic Society is the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in my forty or so years as a researcher. 

I have seen the list of past winners and they are all famous numismatists, which leads me to doubt whether a humble historian of Japanese coinage belongs among them. However, this award will stimulate me to further endeavours and in that spirit I am very happy to accept it. My wife often teases me saying, ‘You may be studying money, but you don’t actually make much!’, so I am hoping that my domestic reputation will be enhanced when I return with this medal. To all those who took part in the decision to award me this medal I offer my heartfelt thanks.”

Saturday, 14th October 2023; Nihon Room, Pembroke College, Cambridge

This one-day seminar, convened to coincide with the retirement of RNS President, Dr Martin Allen, from the Fitzwilliam Museum, brings together experts in numismatics and monetary history for a day of fascinating papers. Speakers will present new research on medieval and early modern money drawing on databases and metal detector finds, metals analysis, coin hoards, and written sources. For further details, please contact Richard Kelleher at rmk34@cam.ac.uk. To book tickets, click here. 

Programme:

Arrival and registration.

10.20. Introduction/welcome (Luke Syson and Richard Kelleher)

Session 1. Chaired by Elina Screen

10.30. Andrew Woods – ‘The Corpus of Early Medieval Coins Finds and English gold shillings’

10.50. Rory Naismith – ‘New Silver in the Seventh Century’

11.10. Jonathan Jarrett – ‘”All That Glitters”: Problems with XRF Analysis of Byzantine Gold Coinage’

11.40. William R. Day Jr – ‘Foreign coins in English shipwreck treasures during the Edwardian period’

Session 2. Chaired by Richard Kelleher

12.00. Barrie Cook – ‘The social context of medieval English hoards’

12.30–14.00 – Lunch break

14.00. Murray Andrews – ‘Medieval and Tudor coin finds from English and Welsh churches’

14.20. Megan Gooch – ‘The Tudor mint and archaeological finds at the Tower’

14.40. Svein Gullbekk – ‘Medieval money and digital currencies’

15.00–15.30 – Coffee break

Session 3. Chaired by D’Maris Coffman

15.30. Chris Briggs – ‘Extortion and the money economy in early fourteenth-century Lincolnshire’

15.50. Tony Moore – ‘The “Allen anomaly”: Using foreign exchange rates to track gold-silver ratios in early fifteenth century Europe’

16.10. Craig Muldrew – ‘The Flow of Coins in the Possession of the attorney John Plumbe of Wavertree Hall in the 1740s’

16.30. Closing remarks (Martin Allen)

This event has been made possible thanks to generous financial support from the British Numismatic Society, the UK Numismatic Trust, CNG Coins, Noonans, and Spink and Son Ltd.

The Warburg Institute is undergoing a multi-million Pound refurbishment. Works are now starting on the basement where the RNS/BNS Library is housed. Our books are to be moved to a new temporary location on the refurbished 4^th floor of the Warburg. From the 11^th September 2023, the procedure for entering the Library is as follows:

Reader’s Card

All RNS/BNS members wishing to visit the numismatic library will need to register for a free Warburg Institute Reader’s Card. This can be obtained from the Warburg duty librarian’s desk – they are issued by the Warburg and not by the RNS/BNS.

To get your reader’s card, please bring valid photographic ID (e.g. passport, driving licence, national ID card), proof of address, and be prepared to show a recent (i.e., within a year) copy of the RNS e-newsletter on your phone, laptop computer, or as a printout (please ensure your email address is visible); this will act as proof of Society membership. 

Opening Hours

From 11^th September, the numismatic library will be accessible 5 days a week! No longer just Tuesday afternoons. 

During this refurbishment, the Warburg is only open on weekdays. Please check the Warburg Institute website for opening hours and days (https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/library-collections-0/library/opening-times)

Location

During the refurbishment (August 2023 – Spring 2024), the numismatic library will be located on the 4^th floor of the Warburg Institute (see floorplan below).

Rare books / Locked section

Until the RNS/BNS Library is moved to its permanent location in the Warburg (Spring 2024), all items in the rare books / locked section of the numismatic library will be inaccessible. This is to keep them safe during the refurbishment; these items will be stored in a secure location. Once the move is complete, our numismatic library will be available to significantly more readers and with vastly extended opening hours: our library will be open to all members of the RNS, the BNS and all Warburg readers – it will be on open shelves rather than in our own locked room.

The RNS/BNS Librarian role remains unchanged.

Finally, I’d like to thank the RNS/BNS Duty Librarians who have given up their time to keep the library open to our members – their commitment and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.

Brad Shepherd

Hon. RNS/BNS Librarian.

This volume contains 15 papers presented to the Seventh century Syrian Numismatic Round Table held at Corpus Christi College Oxford in September 2022. The Round Table was formed over 30 years ago with the aim of bringing together numismatists, archaeologists and historians with an interest in the 7^th c. Byzantine and Early Islamic coinages of Greater Syria and the surrounding area. 6 papers deal with Byzantine coinage, 7 with Arab-Byzantine coinage, with single papers on caliphal lead seals, monetary weight standards in Syria after the conquest and the reforms of Abd al-Malik. Almost all of these are based on new research and well over 400 coins are catalogued and illustrated, including a number of previously unpublished varieties.

The book is available from the publishers www.archetype.co.uk for £32 or from the editor at a.goodwin2@btopenworld.com