In a recent post on her blog, Adventures in My Head, historian Liv Mariah Yarrow discusses a coin in the Kelsey Museum numismatic collection. But it’s not one that was excavated from a secure archaeological context like most of the other coins among the 40,000+ housed at the Kelsey. In fact, it’s a fake. Read…
Guest Post: IPCAA Student James Prosser
Hello, everyone! My name is James Prosser and I am working this summer as a research assistant with Irene to start photographing and cataloging some of the over 40,000(!) ancient coins that are housed in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Since I am helping out, Irene has offered to have me write a blog post…
Teaching with Coins Remotely
I am back! This first teaching semester as a new assistant professor/curator has been a tough one, especially during pandemic times, so I have had to leave the blog to the side by necessity. But I am happy to say I have been coin-busy as well. As part of my class “Long Distance Trade in…
Aurei in Egypt: Karanis Hoard 4
A hoard on display in the Kelsey Museum has been on my mind lately. Hoard 4 from Karanis, containing 60 Roman aurei, was found in a courtyard of B11, a second-century house at the site. The hoard had originally been stored in a cloth bag, whose only remnants were traces of mesh weave left in…
Hellenistic Currency Systems in the Kelsey: The Ptolemies, Part II
Last post we talked a little bit about the closed currency system instituted by Ptolemy I in Egypt in the late 4th century BCE. We talked about how such a system allowed the Ptolemies to control the amount of precious metals in their economy, particularly silver, an element that does not occur naturally in the…
Hellenistic Currency Systems in the Kelsey: The Ptolemies, Part I
As you all know, I have been getting to know the Hellenistic coinages at the Kelsey this month, and I thought it could be interesting for me, a Late Antique person, to have a refresher course on the history of Hellenistic coinages via this blog. Thus, for the next few months, in no particular order,…
Alexander in the Kelsey
In the last post I said we would talk about closed currency systems, but as I started studying the Hellenistic coinage in the collection (323–31 BCE), it became clear I needed to talk about a couple of interesting Alexander-type issues in the Kelsey and their history. I am not a Hellenistic numismatist, but fortunately for…
Appadurai and Roman Provincial Coinage: Musings on Theoretical and Practical Resources
Today I would like to share with everyone, in case it is not already evident, the inspiration behind the name of the blog. The title is an homage to Arjun Appadurai’s seminal book, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives, which is a compilation of essays by anthropologists who explore through different historical…
Checking in from Ann Arbor!
Hello, everyone! My name is Irene Soto Marín. Welcome to my blog, The Social Lives of Coins: Archaeology and Numismatics at the Kelsey. In this initial post, I hope to tell you a little bit about who I am, what I work on, and slowly introduce you to the blog, where together we will be…