A Bit of Numismatics: A Note on Medieval Numismatics in the Fitzwilliam

There is quite a well-written account by a professional numismatist for a general audience about the digitised Corpus and Sylloge of medieval coinage finds from the British Isles being compiled at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge that might be worth reading in the light of some recent dismissive pronouncements by members of the no-questions-asked  kitchen-tabletop collecting fraternity. The article is available online too which should suit the apparent literary tastes of some of the latter (Jonathan Jarrett, 'Digitizing Numismatics: Getting the Fitzwilliam Museum's Coins to the World-Wide Web', Heroic Age Issue 12, May 2009).

The author points out the importance academic numismatics ("which can be seen to sit uncomfortably between archaeology, art history and amateur collecting,") can have if approached in the correct way in medieval studies. That includes of course not focussing merely on typology or style, but seeing coin finds in the context of their findspots and analysing them as coin losses and deposits rather than loose objects in serried rows in a cabinet or heap on a table top.

Please read the article. Here are some quotes

§2. The complexity of coins as evidence derives form the fact that they have a dual nature: they are documents, usually bearing text and issued in the name of a known author, but they are also archaeological objects, deposited or lost in the soil or else hoarded or collected long after their originally intended use.

§17. There are therefore a wide range of ways in which a coin can be used as historical evidence, and still more ways open up when many coins are available. A coin is an artefact and also, often, a text, and some exist in quantities that make statistical conclusions possible.

§5. The precise interpretation of a coin find depends a very great deal on its context (Blackburn 2003 & pers. comm.) 

[then details some issues involving the context of discovery, the special case of UK artefact hunting]

§7 Obviously the circulation of coins also has a great deal to tell us about economic history. This is especially true when the place where a coin was minted, often named on the coins, can be identified, as this opens up evidence of internal economic connections to the historian as well as international ones.

[But again only when we know where the coins we are studying were actually found].

Most of the text (as the title suggests) is devoted to the electronic database which contains details of thousands of individual coins, and where and when they were found. This would be worth reading by those coin dealers and collectors who deny that it would be possible to create such a database of coins coming legitimately onto the market so they can be kept track of.