A two-day international workshop entitled “Gender Numismatics: Fluid Identities and Ancient Coinage” organized by New York’s Cornell University and Germany’s University of Tübingen will investigate how ancient coinage relates to gender studies.
“Recent archaeological studies have acknowledged that the function and meaning of ancient material culture is both resulting in and generative of habits, values, norms, and behaviors in a given society requiring a new set of interpretative methodologies. To that end, gender studies can become part of the research agenda,” reads the workshop website, located at uni-tuebingen.de/gendernumismatics, which adds “the polyvalence of ancient coins provides an unequalled opportunity to enhance our understanding of the complexity and dynamics of gender roles in the Mediterranean World.”
As a medium of exchange, communication as well as power and authority, coins “express and forge identities in different ways. The interplay of image, text, and materiality offers an excellent framework within which to study how coins operate between the single person and society at large with all the various transactions this entails.”
According to the workshop’s organizers, archaeological evidence will take precedence while exploring the “gendered perspectives” of ancient coins.
“For instance, how did coin imageries negotiate gender roles and how did the use of coins in ritual deposits or as jewelry, to name but a few cases, deploy or change ideas of gender?”