(Week 2) Tuesday 20th October
'Greek and Roman Provincial Coins of Aprodisias' - Dr Volker Heuchert (Ashmolean Museum)
Abstract The talk discusses the coinage of the Carian city of Aphrodisias from the late Hellenistic period to the middle of the third century A.D. It will also cover relevant numismatic publications, provide background information about Aphrodisias and discuss the representation of the city's coinage within the collection of the Heberden Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum.
(Week 4) Tuesday 3rd November
'The Watlington Hoard: Viking Armies and Alfred the Great's Coin Reforms in the late 870s' - Dr John Naylor (Ashmolean Museum)
Abstract The Watlington Hoard, discovered in 2015 by a metal-detectorist, was aquired by the Ashmolean Museum in 2017. A nationally-important find of coinage and metalwork - and the first major Viking hoard from Oxfordshire - it dates from the late 870s, a fundamental and tumultuous period in Britain's history. This talk will explore the contents of the hoard, especially the importance of its numismatic component. The wider implications of the Watlington hoard for our understanding of hoarding in late 9th-century southern Britain, interactions between the two remaining English kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, and the movements of the Viking 'Great Army' after the Battle of Edington in 878 will also be discussed.
(Week 6) Tuesday 17th November
'Riches in the Ground. How did Ancient Greeks hide their wealth?' - Dr Frédérique Duyrat (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
Abstract This talk will explore, on the basis of archaeological evidence and literary and documentary sources, the question of how private individuals in the Greek world stored their wealth. It will focus on metal, one of the most durable of goods any the only one that is well documented by texts and archaeology. It will explore the reasons to hide riches and the way to do it, from the containers used to the many places that the Ancients considered safe.
(Week 8) Tuesday 1st December
'Coinage and the Trading Worlds of the Indian Ocean – an Overview' - Dr Shailendra Bhandare (Ashmolean Museum / St. Cross College, Oxford)
Abstract The Indian Ocean with its conduits for trade and commerce has been an important maritime space for connections between ‘East’ and ‘West’. Ever since the ‘discovery’ of the monsoon winds, the Eastern Mediterranean World, the Arabian Peninsula, the East African Coast and the Persian littoral have been in contact with the Indian subcontinent and beyond through these linkages. Coins prove an important marker for many aspects of these trading networks. Much of the discourse around Indian Ocean networks however is compartmentalised into subsets of chronologies, often labelled by the constituent players like ‘Roman Trade’, ‘Arab Trade’, ‘European Mercantile Trade’, etc. The talk will attempt to reverse this, presenting through coins, how these networks have an enduring circulation for over two millennia. We would begin our numismatic journey in the first century CE with ‘Periplus’ and end in the 19th century with the Indian Rupee becoming a ‘global trade currency’ in the Indian Ocean.
