Traditions through Empires

Cities of Asia Minor and their Coin Images. Ed. by Kerschbaum, Saskia/ Vidin, Hülya

184 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

The coins of Asia Minor are the most abundant and polyvalent source for the visualisation of civic identities. This diversity originated in the integration of Asia Minor into the Greco-Roman world, which was brought about by different political actors who had a large impact on social practices and cultural habits. This also meant the subsequent fusion of new values, ethnicities, stories, identities, and religions with existing local traditions. This book examines the iconographic habits of selected civic coinages against the background of continuity and change in social and political structures.
Modern research has long reflected on the phenomenon of tradition as a fundamental part of ancient societies. Previous scholars focused on the mechanisms and institutionalisation of cultural memory. Another theory developed the concept of »intentional history«, which touches upon the sociocultural dimension and especially on the social agency of tradition. Both concepts have never been used systematically in the fields of numismatics before, which is exactly why they constitute the theoretical backbone of this book.
By focusing on seven important cities in Asia Minor with a longstanding numismatic and historical tradition such as Tarsus, Miletus and Sardis, the following questions will be addressed: Which motifs and themes continued to be deployed on coinage from the earliest issues of the respective cities into the Imperial period? Were these coin images influenced by political or social changes? Can we observe the deliberate implementation or rejection of certain images and who was responsible for this decision? And finally, what can we learn from coin images about the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting in ancient societies?
This book contains the proceedings of the first conference of the congress series VLAC “Visual Languages of Ancient Coins”, which was established in 2018. VLAC focusses on coins as a visual medium, with multifaceted and multilayered messages. These various compositions of text and image can only be understood by using an interdisciplinary approach. Moreover, VLAC aims to offer a platform for international scholarly exchange between established numismatists and early career scholars.

• Reihe: Asia Minor Studien
• ISBN: 9783774943148
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 11.11.2021
• Genre: Geschichte/Altertum
• Verlag: Habelt, R
• Herausgegeben von: Saskia Kerschbaum, Hülya Vidin