Annual Awards: Studies Candidates To Compete With Numismatic Excellence Ones?

[Pep]

Greetings Fellow FORVM Members,

You just voted to eliminate the Historical Studies category from the Annual Website Awards.  That means there will be only one category in future contests.  The question before you now is whether you want the affected Studies websites to compete with Numismatic Excellence ones in this singular category.

This poll will be open for two weeks.  Please vote!

Thank you,

The 4th Forvm Website Awards Nomination Committee

[slokind]

But I only vote for the Classical (for example) in areas ancillary to Numismatic studies, and only when they aren't sites aimed at tourism or at school groups.  For example, a site on regional metallurgy, a site on trade as evidenced by epigraphy and coin hoards, a site on regional schools of portraiture (which many of us badly need), a site on fashions in literary topoi, a site on the intermingling of iconography among the competitive religious movements (I could go on and on, besides indispensable sites like Lacus Curtius, for example): I made this sort of a list to make it plain that Classical Studies in not just archaeology, or just history, or just languages and literature.  We need these, we need to know about them.
Good though they may be in their own ways, however, we don't really need to vote on sites like Women's Life in Antiquity or anything else at once so wide-ranging and so restricted (and so difficult to source and difficult to be objective about).
Art History (ancient) is part of Classical Studies, always has been, but not all of it is equally useful for numismatics, though I continue to be surprised at how much of it I use constantly.  So far as that goes, Greek and Roman numismatics always has been part of Classical Studies, too.
I am sometimes sorry to see a web site that although attractive and useful and admirable really is not adequate for use in numismatic studies get nominated simply out of politeness or "fairness".  For example, Mythology as Jochen does it is extremely useful, not least because it has a numismatic focus (and it cites and dates specific sources).  When it was working right, Perseus was glorious for our purposes; perhaps it may recover.  But, though there is a place for Mythology as an escape from the humdrum or as a key to psychology, or the like, sites with such an emphasis are not the most useful for us, in my opinion.
Pat L.
P.S.  Perhaps I misunderstood your inquiry a little.  In case there is to be only one Annual Award, then the choice seems a little different.  Since ancient numismatics is indeed, like epigraphy and literature and art and the rest, part of Classical Studies, then the award should go to the Classical web site of greatest significance and utility for studies focused on numismatics: that is the best site but only if it was a great site for our studies.  For example, if Jochen took all his studies of mythological subject matter on coins and structured it all into a great site, as he is, I am certain, more than capable of doing, then it would be an excellent candidate.  That it also would be far-ranging and tie coins to the body they belong to would only enhance it for consideration.  P.L.

[slokind]

Numismatic Excellence does seem to prejudice studies essential to numismatics that are not strictly, not to say straitly, defined.  Some of the most brilliant work would not win in the end simply because the task of judging could be simplified by just choosing the most strictly numismatic sites.  The same sites as got dropped from consideration here might, in another context, be prejudiced because they relied too much, for example, on material evidence (coins) rather than textual evidence (sources).  In this way, the most valuable scholarship, dismissed as impure, gets shunted: the academic disease of the later twentieth century.
Pat L.

[Pep]

This poll is now closed.

Thank you for taking part in this most difficult decision.  There will only be a Numismatic Excellence category in future Annual Award contests.  Classical Studies and Medieval Studies' target='_blank'>Medieval Studies will no longer appear in them in any way whatsoever.

This earlier message from the Committee needs repeating:

Our addressing of this issue is in no way a repudiation of the honor of Award(s) previously won.  All past contests were sufficiently engaged and hard-fought.  Winners of such Awards will always stand in respect equal to their peers across the years and to the respective levels in the Numismatic Excellence category.

The Official Rules Document will be updated with the majority desire as expressed here in this poll.

Kevin