Field of Focus III - Funded projects Competence centre for ancient numismatics in Baden-Württemberg

Project leader:

Dr. Susanne Börner (Department of Ancient History and Epigraphy)

Funding line:

Cultural Heritage and History

 

Although numerous public institutions, e. g. the University of Heidelberg, keep important coin collections, the situation of numismatics in Baden-Württemberg is problematic:

Curator positions are regularly axed and Universities ignore insistently the importance of numismatics for classical studies. Beyond, resources for cataloguing coins coming from current excavations are missing. The project is targeted on the development of a global concept for the establishment of a competence centre for ancient numismatics in Baden-Württemberg at the Department of Ancient History and Epigraphy of the University of Heidelberg, in other words, the project aims to create the fundamentals of the needed research facilities. This centre will be useful for institutions, which keep coin collections or coins from finds, but are not able to employ numismatic staff. It is the project’s target to create an IT-infrastructure in order to place these collections or stocks (again) at researchers’ and academic teachers’ disposal. Co-operation partners are the State Museum of Baden, Karlsruhe, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums, Mannheim, the Lobdengau-Museum, Ladenburg, and the Department of Ancient History of the University of Freiburg. In particular the cooperation with the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums is attractive, because their Centre of Archeometry can help to answer scientific questions (e. g. concerning the materiality of coins), which cannot be dealt by the traditional methods of humanities.