A week of archaeological sites was a lovely break from writing. Yesterday and today have just been reading literature on file and looking over notes for the next chapter. I thought I’d throw up this coin (HN Italy 2013) and Crawford’s 2002 comments:
From: M.H. Crawford, “Provenances, Attributions, and Chronology of Some Early Italian Coinages,” CH IX (2002), pg. 274.
I’m always nostalgic about this type. I have strong memories of the first time I ‘found’ it in the old Ashmolean coin room and how much I loved bringing students in to see it and talk about its relationship to Roman types (RRC 28/3):
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My favorite line out of this article of Crawford is certainly:
“It is no good simply lying in one’s bath and thinking that such-and-such an issue looks rather nice in such-and-such a year…”
I never dare do such a thing, but I did read this just as I was thinking how nice a bath sounded on a cold rainy Istanbul afternoon. He startled me into keeping at my computer. No bad thing.
The other Crawfordian gem of today’s readings was pretty much all of his 2009 article on aes signatum. Just to give a bit of the flavor, it begins “The term aes signatum seems to be taking an unconscionable time dying” and contains a choice observation about “typical Anglo-Saxon insouciance about anything written in German, or even in French” followed by a pointed suggestion that in this case “maybe the insouciance was justified”. (SNR 88 (2009): 195-197).
Liv Mariah Yarrow 