Koinon: International Journal of Classical Numismatic Studies

I'm happy to help in any way I can as well. May I make one suggestion to change the title 'Dark Ages' to 'Early Middle Ages'? 'Dark Ages' is frowned upon in the medievalist community...

 

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Yes, thank you.

 

The folowing is quoted from my web page:

This page is very much a 'fast food' or 'pop culture' approach to the subject of ancient numismatics. I am an amateur collector and offer no guarantee of completeness or accuracy on any material on this site. I recommend that you research your questions rather than accepting blindly anything posted here. I also recommend you apply this same degree of care in using any other source material online or in hard copy. This site was intended to expose new collectors to an enjoyable hobby. No claim is made to serious scholarship. Serious numismatists are also welcomed here while they await publication of more proper and scholarly coverage of this material.

The last line shows my bad attitude toward serious numismatists. I wrote it 20 years ago and I'm still waiting. I don't care what you or I write, it will not be accepted by the academic crowd. When my page was new, I received more than one inquiry as to who I was and what degrees I held. In one case, I was told that a high school kid could not quote my material because their teacher forbade use of anything online that did not have an address ending in .edu or .gov. I have books with material both good and bad from authors of a wide variety of backgrounds. I really suggest you save yourself the frustration of trying to be something you are not. I am, however, all for peer review and would be happy to read anything TIF writes. As far as I know, she posted the only image of us together.

Trivia:
Find the Numismatist in this photo. Read the helmets.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f3/75/28/f37528bdffe29782173f103f2aa90b2a.jpg


Answer:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dane Rowe, sidecar racer&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilx9S2i5DTAhVk2IMKHTn1DacQsAQIGQ&biw=1024&bih=473&dpr=1.88

 

I've actually found the academic numismatic community ("serious numismatists") incredibly welcoming when it came to producing Potamikon- reading drafts, offering endorsements, etc. There was only one old crank. And even his comments resulted in a better product. Ultimately, the enthusiastic scholars far outnumbered him.

In terms of research, I would OK a student visiting my library to cite your work but only because I personally know your site is reliable. If it were a different topic that I wasn't familiar with I wouldn't recommend it, because there's just too much bogus info out there and plenty of well-vetted sources to choose from. But it all depends on the nature of the research project.

 

I can't speak to the attitudes or behavior of contemporary high school teachers, but the relationship between "academic" and "amateur" numismatists is quite a bit more nuanced, positive and fruitful than this black and white characterization implies. I don't doubt that there is resistance--for good reasons and for bad--from some academicians to some amateurs some of the time, but there always has been and continues to be mutually fruitful interaction as well. My own experiences have been entirely positive. I have a modest list of peer-reviewed papers, sometimes cited in other "serious" publications; no one has ever interrogated me about my entirely unimpressive academic credentials. A better example is RBW, who knew and corresponded with everyone involved with RR numismatics--in academia and elsewhere--and who published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. I doubt any credentialed scholar ever asked to see Rick's diplomas either.

Phil Davis

 

Thanks, TIF. That's a good point. Am I passionate enough about it to see it through to a successful product? Certainly not as passionate as I am about the next volume of Potamikon, or some of my other scholarly activities. But I think it would be fun and also academically valuable (I don't think those things are mutually exclusive).

 

I've written both for a classics academic journal (Vergilius) and for the less formal Celator. It seems that Nicholas's proposal might help foster better relationships between collectors and academics.

To me, one of the distinctions between the collector's insight and the professional academic's insight is simply the bibliographical "legwork" that has to be done to publish in a scholarly journal; i.e., making sure you don't accidentally reproduce an argument that was buried in that 19th-century German text you didn't know existed.

As for raw insight, I can't imagine many academics who have more ready knowledge about ancient coins than, say, Doug Smith. Atherton on the Flavians. Victor Clark (who has a history M.A.) on Constantine. I'd love to see more collaboration between the two communities; i.e., interesting insights and questions emerging from collectors, with scholars bringing their bibliographical and research expertise to bear in exploring answers and possibilities to those questions. I'd love, for example, to see more co-written projects.

As for review, I think blind peer review is best. I'd be uncomfortable with a journal in which each author suggested his or her own reviewers. That would not ensure a high quality of research, IMHO. I enjoyed the Celator as much as anyone, but quite frankly, some bad information appeared in its pages simply because the operation just wasn't set up for significant review.

My 2 denarii.

 

I'm leaning more toward full blind review with the exception of noted experts writing short notes or reviews. If in another language and no one on the board can read it, independent peer review will be accepted if the work is desirable enough (I'm assuming that would be rare).

I too have published both a professional level book and an article in the Celator, and hope this journal does exactly what you say- fosters collaboration between scholars and collectors.

That being said, I'd love it if you signed up for the editorial board- we could certainly use a philologist. Commitment is to read and evaluate at least one paper per year.

 

Yes, I could do that. Message me your email and I'll send you my CV. My publication record is modest, but I'm happy to make whatever contribution you'd deem fitting. At the very least, I'm a keen copyeditor!

 

Academics want and need publications in journals accepted as credible by their department's promotion and tenure committee. The Celator (which I published in many times) did not satisfy the criterion (and I didn't mention those articles on my academic CV).

The trick to serious academic publication is it is supposed to be both new (even to scholars), make a significant contribution, and, in addition, acknowledge, cite, and summarize relevant preceding scholarly work by others. There are many interesting potential articles that would not meet those criteria.

There are quite a few scholarly journals that accept articles on ancient coins. The topics they consider are very broad. If someone has a contribution to scholarship to make, there is lots of room in journals devoted to scholarship.

If someone has something worthwhile to say that is not scholarship, he/she can make a website on it. You have all had a chance to see mine:
http://augustuscoins.com/ed/
Some of those pages have more work in them than some academic articles, but none add to scholarship. I recently completed articles on the quinarius and argenteus denominations, and before that one on how scholars assign dates to Roman Republican coins. Perhaps they are interesting to CoinTalk members, but they would not qualify as something a university department would credit.

 

Great projects start with a single idea. Give it a try. I'll do what I can.Good luck.

 

My scholarly articles have nothing to do with coins. I enjoy scholarly articles on coins, but I also enjoy articles that would never make it into a peer reviewed publication. There is a place for both. I too wish that academics could work more with numismatists. The resistance to such does not come only from academics.

 

Before Cointalk there was Moneta on Yahoo. Pretty much defunct now as too often it became a loud shouting match between "experts" in the ancient numismatic field while degrading folks who they felt weren't at their level. The mainstream collectors who just enjoy reading articles and learning about the hobby were turned off completely. What I guess I'm trying to say is that the vast majority of ancient collectors are nowhere near experts in the field and are looking for a lighter view of the hobby. That's why the Cointalk format works for me and a lot of other folks. Is there room for in-depth scholarly articles in the new publication ... absolutely. But I certainly believe if you want it to succeed you need more widespread appeal and to me that's having articles that address the beginning, intermediate and advanced collectors.

 

I completely agree with everything said above... well put.

I have written peer reviewed research articles before (on engineering not numismatics) and I can agree that the new contribution to the field piece is the kicker. My doctoral advisor put it to me like this. To write a peer reviewed research article you need to know more on that specific topic, big or small, than anyone else in the world (I didn't and don't of course but doctoral advisors love to say scary things like this to students lol). That kind of writing about minute details is just simply not interesting to the vast majority of people.

Thats why I really like this idea of an annual ancient coin publication for collectors and academics. I'm not sure what help I could be but if you require any please let me know @Nicholas Molinari.

Also I hadn't known about your site until just now @Valentinian. Excellent job. That is the kind of resource I enjoy. Both history and numismatics.

 

Ideally, publication in this journal would qualify for rank and tenure decisions (since we will have expert referees). But not everything would necessarily fit that category, which is why there would be room for short notes and more reflective essays/commentary.

 

Sounds great and I feel the pros & cons of everyone that posted (Doug).
I am about as far from an expert as a person can be, but I love history and the numistatics of the history coins bring out.
I'm willing to help any way I could but I think I'm more of the review type.
I really hope you see this through, it could be real interesting.

 

Sorry I missed meeting you at the show today. Unfortunately, I had to leave prematurely for family reasons. I regret that I will not be able to return to the show.

 

I've had similar experiences at least within RR numismatics. I haven't published a paper yet, but I've written several times to the ANS and other orgs as well as curators of collections at colleges and museums to either discuss items in their collection, submit questions or ask for information(usually scans of one sort or the other) and have never had someone question my credentials or experience. All of my correspondence has been extremely respectful and in most cases appreciated. I'm only 25 and have a Bachelors in Computer Science and didn't take a single class in high school or college about ancient history or ancient art, so my resume is about as far removed from professional numismatics as is possible, but as far as I can tell it's never seemed to have been held against me. If one were to only accept information from credentialed numismatists with professional degrees in relevant areas you'd have to discount much of what's come along since Crawford along with some of the sources he cites as well.

 

As someone fairly new to ancients (say four years), I'm always interested in learning more. I also like seeing work by people I already like. I will work harder to find, read and understand it. Also, I would prefer to read articles that have a good mix of scholarly work but also connect to the average $20-50 ancient collector. I want to learn and get smarter about ancients very much. But you can't throw me into the deep end, toss a few charts and impenetrable articles at me and say "SWIM NOW!"

I remember first collecting a few years ago and I was confused because I started with a few AE3's and then I started buying Folles and then wondering "when did the names change?" Well I could look in a book because I didn't have $1200 (and still don't) to buy RIC. I wasn't familiar with Wildwinds and I didn't know how to find the right titles in online downloads. Worst of all I really didn't know where to turn for help in those areas to be able to find my own answers. The one thing I still feel like after a few years of working with ancients is that I always wish I knew more in a wide variety of areas. Like I'm a little too dumb or not a big enough spender to matter in the ancient collecting world. I still have my fun anyway but I wish the knowledge was dispersed a little better. I still don't know how many SNG named references there are yet or where to find them all. Super frustrating. So maybe bear that in mind.

 

I'm 25 as well and studying for my Master's in mental health counseling, so I am also pretty far removed from a professional academic background in ancient history or art, although I did decide to minor in History in undergrad, and as a result I took classes in medieval history and Islamic history (the latter I really enjoyed due to having a very good professor who specialized in that field). I could have taken Ancient Roman history but that was too early in the day for my liking! It wasn't the initial trigger, but collecting coins was what really got me into ancient and medieval history, not school/college.