Research Activities
The Research Culture
ACANS actively promotes the numismatic research of scholars and students. Its funded senior and junior fellowships enable numismatic studies to be conducted at the Centre itself (see Funding Opportunities).
The Gale Lectures in Ancient Numismatics
Each year a distinguished scholar is invited to deliver public lectures at Macquarie University on topics pertaining to ancient numismatics. The first were delivered by Professor Harold Mattingly in 2002. They have now been published in the Journal of the Numismatic Association of Australia 14 (2003) 47-59.
Research Programs of ACANS
Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Australia
ACANS administers the SNG Australia project. The secretary of the SNG Australia committee and the editor of the proposed volumes is the director of ACANS, Dr K. A. Sheedy. The project goal is to publish all ancient Greek coins in Australian public collections. Volume I (now in preparation) will present the W. L. Gale Collection of South Italian coins. Volumes II-IV will contain the combined collections of (in New South Wales) Macquarie University, the Nicholson Museum of the University of Sydney, and the Powerhouse Museum; (in Victoria) the University of Melbourne and the Museum of Victoria; (in Tasmania), the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and the University of Tasmania; and (in South Australia), the Art Gallery of South Australia and the University of Adelaide. Volume I is expected to be published in 2006.
The SNG Australia project has been endorsed by the Australian Academy for the Humanities and by the Union Académique Internationale. In 2005 the SNG Australia project was awarded a publication grant by the UAI. The project also acknowledges the generous support of the British Academy in providing software for the publication.
An Index to Testimonia Numaria
Dr Kate da Costa, research officier for ACANS, has been preparing an index to the book, Testimonia Numaria. Greek and Latin Texts concerning Ancient Greek Coinage (London 1993), which was complied by Professor John Melville Jones (University of Western Australia). In support of this project grants have been generously given by the Numismatic Association of Australia and the University of Western Australia. The index was completed in 2007. Although publication is expected to follow soon, scholars and institutions interested in the index are invited to submit requests for advance copies to the director of ACANS.
The Taranto 1911 Hoard Project
Dr K. A. Sheedy is currently working on a new publication of the 1911 Taranto Hoard (IGCH 1874). It will feature unpublished material from the holdings of the British Museum and the Athens Numismatic Museum. A special study of the ingots, to be included in the volume, is being prepared by Dr J. Kroll.
Jebel Khalid
Associate Professor Ted Nixon, a board member of ACANS, continues his work on the coins discovered in the Australian excavations of Jebel Khalid in Syria. Preliminary reports on this important excavation have now been published as a supplementary volume of Mediterranean Archaeology: Graeme Clarke (ed.), Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates: Report on Excavations 1986-1996. Volume I , Meditarch Suppl. 5 (2002)
Tenos Excavations
Dr Nota Kourou, the director of the University of Athens excavations on the Cycladic island of Tenos, has invited Kenneth Sheedy to participate in this project with a study of the coins that have been discovered. This provides ACANS with its first institutional fieldwork association. Dr Kourou was the 2005 Visiting Professor of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.