by Georges Depeyrot
March 7, 2013 – In 1995 the later founders of Moneta decided to create a new series of publications to facilitate the dissemination of works, theses, inventories, etc., concerning numismatics or monetary history that were more and more difficult to publish. The first volume was printed in October 1995, and since this moment, several volumes have been published each year, 4 / year at the beginning, up to 20 / year recently.
The target of Moneta is large, including all the aspects of the coin production, the technology of the mints, the coin circulation and the coin finds; monetary history and economic history and also the subjects of some volumes.
Presently Moneta is one of the major publishing houses in the field, with important and long-term programs and punctual publications. Moneta publishes for example the coin finds from Antiquity to 1794 in Belgium, and several other countries are involved in publication programs, like France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovenia. Moneta also published translations of the inventories of coin finds in USSR, and has now become the publishing house of the ‘Coin hoards from Roman Britain’ series, as well as of ‘Fundmünzen der Römischen Zeit’ in Slovenia.
There is no restriction concerning the languages: Moneta has published in French, English, Armenian, Romanian, sometimes with abstracts in Polish, Japanese, etc.
There is no restriction concerning the kind of coinage. Some of the volumes deal with Celtic coins, others with Ancient (Greek or Roman), Byzantine, Islamic, medieval and modern coins, even with medals and tokens of the 19th or 20th century. Moneta also published volumes dealing with iconography.
Since 2011 Moneta has included the publications of the DAMIN program, mainly focused on the 19th century crisis in a specific series Documents and Studies on 19th c. Monetary History with volumes on India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, the International Monetary Conferences, the Reports of various committees in relation with the bimetallic crisis and the gold standard.
Up to now, 155 volumes have been printed or are currently in press. The format is A4 and the volumes now include color plates, or are even completely in color (like the ‘Roman coin finds in Britain’ volumes). In general they have about 200 to 400 pages but some of them are up to 1,000 pages and more.
Just to give some examples, the very last volumes comprise DAMIN volumes (the last one on the Osaka mint), ‘Rethinking Roman Britain: Coinage and Archaeology’, ‘The Silver Coinage of the Macedonian Regions’, ‘Trouvailles et trésors monétaires en Belgique’, ‘Sources and Studies on Spanish 17th c. Monetary History’ concerning as well European as Asian countries.
You can find out more about Moneta and its book on the publisher’s website.
For more information on the DAMIN project, visit the DAMIN website.