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Hmm.  Would it be as easy (Knock, Knock, @Restitutor) as adding a category for 'Other Ancient,' like some auction houses do?

...If the coin was actually issued by Carthaginians, you might skate past by calling it 'Greek.'  --But that immediately confronts you with the non-Carthaginian, pre-Roman Iberian issues.  (--'Celtic'?  Not so sure.)

 

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1 hour ago, JeandAcre said:

Hmm.  Would it be as easy (Knock, Knock, @Restitutor) as adding a category for 'Other Ancient,' like some auction houses do?

...If the coin was actually issued by Carthaginians, you might skate past by calling it 'Greek.'  --But that immediately confronts you with the non-Carthaginian, pre-Roman Iberian issues.  (--'Celtic'?  Not so sure.)

 

@JeandAcre I like your idea of an "Other Ancient" forum. This would also include the wandering tribes, such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Lombards. And, perhaps, various northern African countries, before they were conquered by Rome (Carthage, Mauretania, Numidia), even though, perhaps, one could call some of them "Greek" or "pseudo-Greek", although I'm not very knowledgeable about that. And, any other ancients, which don't seem to fit into the existing forums.

Edited by sand
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I guess Carthaginian coinage in general would be Greek on the basis that it imitated Greek coinage, and coinage from Phoenicia is posted in the Greek forum. Except when it ends up under Roman Empire 🤣

5 minutes ago, sand said:

Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Lombards

These guys are dangerously close to (or would count as) Medieval (along with the Saxons).

Edited by John Conduitt
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1 minute ago, John Conduitt said:

I guess Carthaginian coinage in general would be Greek on the basis that it imitated Greek coinage, and coinage from Phoenicia is posted in the Greek forum. Except when it ends up under Roman Empire 🤣

These guys are dangerously close to Medieval (along with the Saxons).

Thanks. I will post in the Greek section

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@sand, Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  To All of the above!

...By contrast, I'm having trouble thinking that the existing 'Non-Western' category can consistently work for any collective context besides Asia --which, as posters there have demonstrated over and over, already includes a profound and correspondingly vast component of Hellenistic influence.  

In effect, what we have to do is to maintain a sometimes perilous dialectic between boundaries which are actually useful to acknowledge, ...and their frequently inherent porosity.  ...For another instance, I've run into this while contemplating posting more Aksumite.  It's kind of, Greek (legends)?  African (continent)?  Yes, And....

(Edit:)  In the case of anything besides lower life forms, taxonomy is fraught with peril.  Watch out for the shoals!

Edited by JeandAcre
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20 minutes ago, JeandAcre said:

@sand, Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  To All of the above!

...By contrast, I'm having trouble thinking that the existing 'Non-Western' category can consistently work for any collective context besides Asia --which, as posters there have demonstrated over and over, already includes a profound and correspondingly vast component of Hellenistic influence.  

In effect, what we have to do is to maintain a sometimes perilous dialectic between boundaries which are actually useful to acknowledge, ...and their frequently inherent porosity.  ...For another instance, I've run into this while contemplating posting more Aksumite.  It's kind of, Greek (legends)?  African (continent)?  Yes, And....

I agree, although I think 'Other Ancient' would run into the same problems as 'Non-Western'. You still have to decide what 'Other' is. If I have a Hellenistic coin, it might make the choice harder, as it's even more ambiguous. 'Greek' sounds more Hellenistic than 'Other', while 'Non-Western' is more clearly 'Eastern'. (Maybe just call it 'Eastern'). Probably the best catch-all term outside the Far East would be 'Barbarian', but I don't think many collectors would appreciate that 😁

Edited by John Conduitt
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...Along with the 'laugh' imogee. 

...But I still think an 'Other Ancient' category could be of real use.  Yes, we'll always be trying to thread a needle with a nail, but there could still be room for discrete progress beyond where we are.

(...Why I vote the way I do.  The lesser of two evils is always preferable.)

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54 minutes ago, JeandAcre said:

...Along with the 'laugh' imogee. 

...But I still think an 'Other Ancient' category could be of real use.  Yes, we'll always be trying to thread a needle with a nail, but there could still be room for discrete progress beyond where we are.

(...Why I vote the way I do.  The lesser of two evils is always preferable.)

The problem is those Romans and Greeks. Everything comes harmoniously together at 'Medieval'.

Although now 'World Coins' is puzzling me, in the absence of 'Non-World'. Shouldn't it be 'Modern' or 'Milled'? This is a never-ending debate 🤣

Edited by John Conduitt
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3 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

Although now 'World Coins' is puzzling me, in the absence of 'Non-World'. Shouldn't it be 'Modern' or 'Milled'? This is a never-ending debate 🤣

No, I think "World Coins" is a category used in the USA for all kinds of coins after about 1500 except for the USA (and American Colonial coinage). Here, calling the category "World Coins" avoids encouraging posts about US coins. Just curious: can anyone tell me if in the UK, the term "World Coins" generally includes everything non-British, including US coins? Do coins from Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countries count as "World" in the UK, or as something ancillary to British coins?

Edited by DonnaML
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7 hours ago, DonnaML said:

No, I think "World Coins" is a category used in the USA for all kinds of coins after about 1500 except for the USA (and American Colonial coinage). Here, calling the category "World Coins" avoids encouraging posts about US coins. Just curious: can anyone tell me if in the UK, the term "World Coins" generally includes everything non-British, including US coins? Do coins from Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countries count as "World" in the UK, or as something ancillary to British coins?

In the UK, the Commonwealth comes under World Coins i.e. anything you can’t or couldn’t spend at home. Irish coins are a grey area. But it’s confused now everything’s online and most people are from the US, calling British coins World Coins.

Presumably, anyone can post anything in World Coins, including US. The implied date cut off is a little odd, and not alluded to by the name.

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13 hours ago, DonnaML said:

No, I think "World Coins" is a category used in the USA for all kinds of coins after about 1500 except for the USA (and American Colonial coinage). Here, calling the category "World Coins" avoids encouraging posts about US coins. Just curious: can anyone tell me if in the UK, the term "World Coins" generally includes everything non-British, including US coins? Do coins from Commonwealth and former Commonwealth countries count as "World" in the UK, or as something ancillary to British coins?

This is something I hadn't thought of before! Shows how US-centric I am, that 'World Coins' has a totally different meaning if you are for example in the UK. Overall though, your definition of World Coins is spot-on for how I think about it. 

Regarding some of the other comments... 

I was curious about Carthage so I checked where CNG and VCoins puts them, and they both seem to bucket them into 'Greek'. Imagine they don't have their own category just due to general sparseness? Thanks, Cato! 

Regarding Aksum.. that would go into 'Non-Western'. I think in the early days (can I even say early days yet when the forum is still only 2 months old!? lol) of the forum I think it was called 'Other Ancients' but we changed it to 'Non-Western' as that seemed to be the more common label.

Good discussions though and definitely open to changes/additions as needed!

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This is the reason I had “Other Western” as a category in my AMCC auctions.  I put both Celtic and Carthaginean in there.  Makes sense for early Iberian too. Maybe worth thinking about, @Restitutor?  Admittedly it’s non-standard, but more accurate!  We could set a good trend…

I’d also be in favour of appending “Modern” in front of “World” which makes the nature of the category clearer. (And would continue to have the salutary effect of stopping Americans from posting US coins anywhere. 😆)

Edited by Severus Alexander
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1 hour ago, Severus Alexander said:

This is the reason I had “Other Western” as a category in my AMCC auctions.  I put both Celtic and Carthaginean in there.  Makes sense for early Iberian too. Maybe worth thinking about, @Restitutor?  Admittedly it’s non-standard, but more accurate!  We could set a good trend…

I’d also be in favour of appending “Modern” in front of “World” which makes the nature of the category clearer. (And would continue to have the salutary effect of stopping Americans from posting US coins anywhere. 😆)

I don't know about putting all these disparate groups down as 'Other'. I imagine auction houses put Carthaginian in with Greek because of the similarities. Once Alexander the Great conquered Phoenicia, the two cultures were close. The Carthaginian colony in Sicily where many of their coins were produced (few were produced in Africa) shared an island with Greeks and copied their coinage. You'd also have a situation where the coinage of Phoenician cities like Sidon and Tyre is in a different bucket to Carthage.

Conversely, their coinage has nothing to do with the Celts, who took influence from Greek coinage but were not Hellenised. They were more influenced by Roman culture.

'Iberian' isn't a single identity. In the south, there was a strong Carthaginian/Greek influence, which obviously faded after the Punic Wars. Those coins are Hellenistic. In the north were the Celtiberians, who struck coins later under Roman rule. That isn't any different to the Celtic coinage of northern Europe.

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28 minutes ago, John Conduitt said:

(few were produced in Africa)

Interesting!  Many are normally catalogued as being of North African mintage.  Would be grateful for pointers to the literature on this, if you know some.

29 minutes ago, John Conduitt said:

You'd also have a situation where the coinage of Phoenician cities like Sidon and Tyre is in a different bucket to Carthage.

Good point!  Of course it's a bit weird to catalogue these as "Greek" too.  Definitely a western-centric system of categorization we've inherited here.  It's a difficult decision whether to just go with the flow or try to resist that tendency.  One I faced in creating my auction categories!

You're right that the "other western" groups are disparate, but that's a match with "non-western" which we already have as a category, so I don't view that as a problem.  The main problem is that people won't necessarily know to look/post in "other western" without having checked out a description of the category.  In my auctions I always listed the category as "Other non-western (Celtic, Carthage, etc.)."  Not sure if we want the name to be that long though.

I don't think the fact that these polities inherited their coinage tradition from Greeks counts for all that much, really.  Otherwise we should call everything outside China (and maybe India) "Lydian." 😆  Many auction houses have gone to "Eastern Greek" for Parthian etc. which is an improvement, I suppose, but still.  I had a category called "Persian/Parthian/Sasanian etc." which might be helpful?

Just thinking out loud here, not really trying to convince anyone of anything!

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2 hours ago, Severus Alexander said:

Interesting!  Many are normally catalogued as being of North African mintage.  Would be grateful for pointers to the literature on this, if you know some.

I've read this a few times. Here's an example https://www.coinworld.com/news/world-coins/carthage-and-its-coins.html

Although perhaps the fact that there isn't much certainty about where the coins were struck means the output in North Africa could be anywhere from not much to a sizable proportion. At least, more appears to have been produced elsewhere, like Sicily, Sardinia and Spain.

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stripset.jpg.8d8ae22b9a8ac7a81ccbca6b749e9df5.jpg

Before I knew that US was not part of the world I made the above strip for my profile page but had to modify it to avoid overlaps with other things to the point I gave up trying to make it look right.  Being from the US, I would have put my Canadian coins in world but just realized I have no pictures of any.  When made I considered the set to be appropriate for what I considered to be 'all' coins.  The HIII penny is 'World', the Parthian 'Non Western' and the cash 'Far Eastern'.  I suppose the quarter is out of place because it strikes me as appropriate for 'World' if it were not for my US bias and the fact I like the coin which I have had for ~65 years.  When I got it, 1917 was a lot more modern than it is today.   I have gone on record before as opposing categorizing coins, history and people.  I am old enough to remember when many things now offensive were seen daily and we were not aware that 'they' can be a singular pronoun.  I also remember when many people thought Byzantines were ancient but coins of western Europe a thousand years newer were medieval.  We were messed up then and we are now - just in a different way.

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5 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

I've read this a few times. Here's an example https://www.coinworld.com/news/world-coins/carthage-and-its-coins.html

Although perhaps the fact that there isn't much certainty about where the coins were struck means the output in North Africa could be anywhere from not much to a sizable proportion. At least, more appears to have been produced elsewhere, like Sicily, Sardinia and Spain.

Thanks, @John Conduitt!  I wonder to what extent the impression of a low output from Carthage at any point could be due to an excavation bias. (I believe there's a lot more archaeology going on in Sicily and Spain than in north Africa.)  In any case, I read Vagi here as saying the beginnings of Carthaginean coinage were exclusively Sicilian (certainly true!), and the output from Carthage was low between the 1st and 2nd Punic wars (I didn't realize that!), but I don't think he implies the Carthage mint was inactive at other times.  Please don't feel obliged to chase up another source, though, it's up to me to do the digging if I really want to know!

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