FY2016 Report of Lucia Carbone, Assistant Curator
Report of Lucia Carbone, Edlow Family Assistant Curator of Ancient Coins
October 29, 2016
I joined the ANS Curatorial Team as the Edlow Family Assistant Curator for Ancient Coins in September 2016. Earlier this year, I received a PhD in Classical Studies from Columbia University, with a dissertation focusing on the impact of Roman imperialism on the monetary and administrative systems of the province of Asia between the 2nd century BC and the end of the 1st century AD. The originality of my research lies in my quantitative approach to the study of the progressive ‘Romanization’ of the Asian monetary system, as well as my integrated use of numismatic and epigraphic sources to shed new light on the interaction between local elites and centralized Roman power.
Before coming to ANS, I taught Latin, Greek and Roman history and Contemporary Civilization both at college and high school levels. I am also a Fellow of the Academy of Teachers, an organization devoted to foster and honor didactic excellence among high school teachers. My passion for teaching lead to the organization of the project ‘Classics and the City’ in cooperation with the Paideia Institute, which will see students of selected high schools in the NYC area pursuing original research on specific events of Roman history through coinage.
As an alumna of the 2012 ANS Summer Seminar, I’ve inherited from the late Rick Witschonke a passion for cistophori. I am currently cataloging the more than 3,700 coins that Rick bequeathed to the ANS, a unique collection that will offer great insight into the complexities of Roman monetary and economic policy in the Mediterranean from the 2nd century BC on. The preliminary cataloguing of the collection has already been done, thanks also to the fantastic work of the assistant photographer Emma Pratte and interns such as Douglas Wong.
This cataloging work will lead to the publication of a comprehensive catalogue by the end of 2017, the organization of an international conference and hopefully an exhibit. Also, I will be teaching a graduate Numismatics course at Columbia University in the course of the Fall Semester 2017 focussing precisely on the period of time covered by the RBW Collection.
As part of my research on the RBW collection, I am also preparing a die study of the late cistophori of Tralles, which will help to quantify the economic effects of Sulla’s harsh economic measures on the Asian cities. The partial results of this study will be presented in January 2017 at the AIA-SCS Annual meeting in the course of the ANS panel “Sovereignty and Money’, which I have organized together with Irene Soto, another alumna of the ANS Summer Seminar.
I have published on the difference between Roman and Greek ideas of sovereignty in the Provincia Asia and on Roman provincial control over the issue of silver civic coinage in Asia in the 1st century BC. I have currently four more articles under review. This year I presented at international conferences in Europe and in the US on topics focusing on the changes caused by the Roman conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Republic, ranging from Mark Antony’s fleet coinage to the epigraphic presence of Roman currencies in the province of Asia.
Return to FY2016 Annual Report
