Somehow, as we near the very end of 2018, I still haven’t told you all about my last publication of 2017. Let’s not talk about why that is—words like ‘term’ and ‘marking’ would feature large in such a talk, and now neither of those things pertain—but instead I’ll tell you its story, which is one of those that probably shouldn’t have happened, but since it did it needs explaining. You will remember, I imagine, that I was at the International Numismatic Congress in Taormina in 2015, because I did eventually recount it all here. You may also be aware that the proceedings from that Congress are published, and if you’re very up in the numismatic news loops and could afford the substantial cost of the volumes you may have got them, and realised I’m not in them. And if I’m very lucky, or unlucky, you may have thought: what happened there?
Cover of Maria Caccamo Caltabiano (ed.), Proceedings of the XVth International Numismatic Congress, Taormina, 2015 (Roma 2017), vol I.
Well, I wondered that myself when a colleague who was also there mentioned that they’d had proofs some time ago, that being the first I’d heard since I sent in my text. So, at that point I got in touch with the editors and asked if I’d been rejected and if they could send me feedback at least. And a week or so later I got a short, but slightly shame-faced e-mail explaining that somehow, the editor of the Byzantine section had missed my paper. Well, by this time the volumes were not just in press but some had been sent out. All that could be done was to format my paper as a PDF addendum and include it as an extra with all future sales. So if you now look for the proceedings you will see that their format is advertised as ‘2 voll. + PDF addendum’, and ladies and gentlemen, that PDF addendum is all me, all 4 pages of it. I had extra fun explaining this to my university library when they had to decide what file to put in the open access depository; first I had to convince them it even existed. But it does, and so, I commend it to your notices, and also wish you all a happy 2019.1 There will be more from me in it.
1. Jonathan Jarrett, ‘Why did the Byzantine Coinage Turn Concave? Old Suggestions and a New One’, in Maria Caccamo Caltabiano (ed.), Proceedings of the XV International Numismatic Congress, Taormina 2015 (Roma 2017), Addendum pp. 1-4.
A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe 