FINA:About

The antiquarian approach is currently very much en vogue in numismatics. However, the development of the discipline from the 16th to the 18th century can be evaluated adequately only by taking into account not just printed works, but also manuscript sources: mainly scholarly correspondence, but also shorter treatises or manuscripts of books that were never published. This material is scattered all over the world in archives and public as well as private libraries and is largely unknown today; hence, it is frequently overlooked by scholars.

The international project Fontes Inediti Numismaticae Antiquae (FINA) has been created in order to remedy this. It is being coordinated by the Académie royale de Belgique (Brussels; François de Callataÿ) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna; Michael Alram and Bernhard Woytek, senior scientist Daniela Williams) and is under the patronage of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI). This project envisages the publication (also online) mainly of scholarly correspondence dedicated to ancient Greek and Roman numismatics, dating from c. 1500 to c. 1800. It was decided to limit the time frame to the end of the 19th century because Joseph Eckhel, the “Father of Ancient Numismatics” died in Vienna in 1798.

Further information at OeAW Website >>

The FINA Wiki was initiated by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and implemented by KM-A Knowledge Management Associates.

Contact Information can be found here.