The Society has continued the process of modernisation during the year. The main task has been rewriting its bye-laws. The revised version was approved by the Society at a Special General Meeting on 21st November 2006. There were opinions expressed at the meeting that the changes being made did not go far enough and Council took note of these and will revisit the issues raised within the next few years. The new rules are now awaiting Privy Council approval. It is expected that they will be enacted by the beginning of the next session in October. During the coming year the main aim of the modernisation process will be to continue the process of increasing the number of fellows. This will enable the Society to have a broader role within the numismatic community in the UK and abroad and bring more financial resources to the Society so that it can support and promote research. I am pleased to report that Council has decided to hold back from raising subscriptions for another year, even though inflation continues to erode the value of our subscriptions. We hope to increase the number of subscriptions rather than the rate of individual subscription.

The move of the Society’s monthly meetings to the Warburg Institute continues to be a benefit to the meetings. Attendance at the meetings has now started to rise. The ‘Show and Tell’ meeting was again a success and brought seven fellows onto the floor to speak of a wide ranging series of objects, covering an eighteenth century French medal catalogue (Hadrien Rambach), a coin of the fourteenth century Bulgarian despot Ivan Dobrotha (Tony Holmes), Ghanaian coins (Harcourt Fuller), African material in the Sarah Sophia Banks’ collection (Katie Eagleton), a thirteenth century Islamic coin with a threat of punishment to sinners (Vesta Curtis), an eighteenth century Japanese coin dealers list (Helen Wang and Joe Cribb) and an overview of first century BC coins imitating Greek issues from Afghanistan (John Perkins). The seminar meeting this year focussed on the role of the internet in Numismatics, with presentations from Dan Pett and Sam Moorhead on the Portable Antiquities Scheme site, Mark Blackburn on the Early Medieval Coins site and Andrew Meadows on the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum site. We also had a rich and varied programme of lectures: one paper on Greek and Roman coinage with representations of Alexander the Great; two papers on the history of numismatics from Chris Schuler, talking about the work of British pioneer John Akerman on British Iron Age coins, and Andrea Agustin, the Spanish scholar working in Renaissance Italy working on Roman coins; two papers on Roman coinage from Constantina Vlachou-Mogire, on the debasement and plating of coins in the late empire, and Edward Besley on the coins of the third century British Empire. The range of approaches to numismatics including historiography, metallurgy, typology, hoard study and new technology made the programme a great learning opportunity for all. We are very grateful to Edward Besley for stepping in to replace the paper by Evgeni Paunov who was unable to travel from Romania for the meeting.

Last year we joined together with the British Numismatic Society for its Summer Meeting. This was held in York, in the Bedern Hall, and the topic was Power, Politics and Coinage, with a wide range of papers presented. The meetings are now joint BNS-RNS events and we are looking forward to the next one at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, this July. The topic will be Currencies in Crisis. We appreciate the hard work done by Kevin Clancy, Director of the British Numismatic Society, in organising these meetings.

Having innovated last year by holding the Society’s annual Medal award ceremony to coincide with our Christmas Party, we continued this new tradition and welcomed the 2006 Medallist François Thierry, curator of East Asian coins at the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. We also had the pleasure of hearing Thierry present a paper on Vietnamese coins and monetary history, demonstrating his range and approach, and reminding us of the danger of using textual sources without reference to the coins themselves. This will be published in the Numismatic Chronicle 2007. We are pleased to say that our new tradition is set to be continued this year too as our medallist for 2007 has already agreed to join us for our December meeting and to present a paper after the award ceremony. You will all be pleased to hear that our 2007 medallist is Professor Wolfgang Hahn, Director of the Institut für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte at the University of Vienna. He is best known for his work on Byzantine coins.

Our publication programme continues to flourish under the direction of our secretary Richard Ashton, with the publication of another Special Publication (no. 40): Ken Sheedy’s study The Archaic and Early Classical Coinages of the Cyclades. With his co-editor Marcus Philips, Richard has also seen through the press, with their customary punctuality, the 2006 Numismatic Chronicle. This is the first in the new enlarged format, and was an amazing extent of 551 pages with 96 plates, the largest volume so far. The new size enables the Society to reduce the cost of production.

Every two years the Society gives prizes for publications on Islamic coins, the Shamma Prize and on the study of third century AD numismatics, the Gilljam Prize. This year there were several very deserving entries for the Shamma Prize. After much discussion it was decided to award the prize jointly to two excellent and innovative books, Aman ur-Rahman’s , Zahir uddin Muhammad Babur. A Numismatic Study and Jere Bacharach’s, Islamic History through Coins – An Analysis and Catalogue of tenth-century Ikhshidid Coinage. The Gilljam Prize was awarded to Edward Besly for his study ‘The Coinage of Allectus: evidence from the Rogiet hoard’, published in BNJ 2006. The annual Parkes Weber Prize for an essay by a young scholar was awarded to Ms Di Hu of Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia for her essay on experimental approaches to the study of the production of ancient coinage. The annual Lhotka Prize for the best book for beginners in English published in the previous two years was awarded to Paul and Bente Withers, for their book The Galata Guide to the Pennies of Edward I and II, just one of a stream of excellent guidebooks being produced by this well-known numismatic partnership.

Council has also had the pleasure of giving over £4000 from its dedicated Grant Funds out to scholars and collectors to support research and its outputs. The Linecar Fund continued to support the annual meeting of the British Association of Numismatic Societies, this year in Manchester and the Lowick Fund again provided funds for the Syrian Round Table Conference being held this year in Birmingham. Lowick Fund Grants were also given to Sanjag Garg of the Indian National Archives, Delhi so he can present a research paper at a conference on Indian temples in Oxford later this year, and to Devendra Handa of Punjab University, Chandigarh, to help publish his research on a hoard of Punjab tribal coins. A Kreitman Endowment Fund grant was given to Jez Stanley of Oxford University to enable him to do research on the British Museum collection of Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins.

Council had application for research grants relating to other fields, but was frustrated by the limited specifications of its existing grant-giving funds. It is hoped in the future that Council will be able to secure donations to set up funds to support a broader range of numismatic research, particularly Roman, Medieval and Modern numismatics. We would be pleased to hear from anyone who would like to make such donations.

The number of Fellows has stayed stable and we hope this is the beginning of a revival in numbers as the decline reported last year has come to an end. We are pleased to report that one new Honorary Fellow was elected, our former President (1994-99) and Medallist (1987) Professor Michael Metcalf. Michael is well known for his many publications on medieval British and European coins; he was Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room in the Ashmolean Museum 1982-98 and editor of our journal 1974-84.

Our Society has been sadly lost five Fellows during the last year. Most notably our Honorary Fellow Dr Ryszard Kiernowski (1925-2006), the doyen of Polish numismatics and specialist in Medieval European coinage who was elected in 1976. He served on the council of the International Numismatic Commission and was internationally respected as a scholar and as a teacher. The deaths have also been reported of Dr Jeffrey May, former Head of Archaeology at Nottingham University and editor of Current Archaeology, elected to the Society in 1997, Professor Robert Newman of Stamford Connecticut elected in 1976, Bruce Brace of the Classical and Medieval Numismatic Society and Honorary Curator of the Numismatic Collection of the McMaster University Museum of Art, elected in 1956, Dr Bent Juel Jensen of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, a collector of Ethiopian coins, elected in 1988. We also belatedly report the deaths of two other fellows: Dr Stuart Munro-Hay, the renowned archaeologist and specialist in Axumite coins, elected in 1976 and John Goodall of the Society of Antiquaries, a specialist in Heraldry, elected in 1991.

As always I am concluding this review with an expression of thanks on behalf of the Society and myself for the excellent work which my colleagues on Council have done for the Society during the last year. I am very grateful for their support and encouragement through the year, particularly in completing the process of renewing the Society’s byelaws. I particularly appreciate the hard work our Treasurer has put into this process and for handling the negotiations with the Privy Council. My particular thanks to all the Society’s officers, again our Treasurer John Morcom and our Secretaries Katie Eagleton and Vesta Curtis, whose steadfast roles have enabled the Society’s day to day business to proceed without hitch. I want to make special mention of Katie who has stepped down from her role on Council and I ask everyone to show their appreciation for her service over the last two years. I am also very grateful to Tony Merson and Barrie Cook our auditors who play an important on-going role in supporting our financial arrangements. Our Vice-Presidents, Donal Bateson and Nick Mayhew continue to provide support and wisdom. Our editors Richard Ashton and Marcus Phillips continue to do their hard work to a high standard and are appreciated for their sound judgement and appropriate sense of urgency. The transition to a new format for the Numismatic Chronicle was handled very well and has been welcomed. I also wish to thank our Tony Holmes, our Librarian, and those who assist him. Tony has had the double role of managing the Library on behalf of this and our sister Society and has for several years done an admirable job balancing the demands of both. I am sorry to say that he has decided not to continue in this role and, having found us a worthy successor, has resigned. I also ask you to applaud his long and important service to the Society as its Librarian. Our assistant Secretary Henry Lythe continues to provide the Secretaries and Society with much appreciated support. I would also like to thanks our departing Council members Chris Howgego, Roger Bland and Mark Thomas for their much appreciated service to the Society.

Joe Cribb
19 June 2007