For this assignment I want you to look at either coins or seals. Both of these sources provide incredible insights into the working of the Byzantine world. For coins you can explore a wide range of features. Take their design; why did the emperors put what they did on their coins? What message were they trying to convey? These messages changed over time, why? What was the point of putting anything on a coin? Or, you could look at where they were made. Which coins were made in which cities? What denominations, how did it change over time? Why? What can that tell us? How varied are the coins?
What can we deduce when one emperor has one design of coin throughout his reign and another has ten? You can pick any period and write anything from the art historical to economic history, to political propaganda, to commentaries on popular faith. For seals you can look at a whole host of things. There are over 13,000 in an online catalogue. If you like institutional history why not pick a place, church, office, or title and look at developments over time. Can you tell anything from the numbers of seals that have survived? Do you see certain offices and titles paired in certain places? If you are looking at a place can we tell anything from the offices that have survived associated with that office?
If you are interested in families look for a family name and chart the fate of that family over time. You might even be able to tie a place or institution and a family together. There are very few seals belonging to women and no one has ever studied them, they would make an interesting research project. The same on both counts can be said of eunuchs. Perhaps you are interested in immigrants to Byzantium, look through the catalogue for non-Greek names and see what you find. If you want to look at epigraphic verse read the metrical seals written in dodecasyllabic poetry. Seals also tell us a great deal about personal piety.
Can you see any patterns in who was putting what holy figures on their seals when? Be careful with seals though, there are 13,000 of them in the database linked below. It is easy to get lost or to bight off more than you can chew. Do not look at every seal from all provinces in all centuries or you will never get to do anything else. Or mix both coins and seals together. Do you want to look at every seal associated with Antioch and all the coins to see what it tells you about the city at that time? That would be great! Seals – https://www.doaks.org/resources/seals , https://pbw2016.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/ Coins –
https://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/books#b_start=0&c5=coins (Free downloads of volumes on Byzantine coins by period) – coinarchives.com for images of coins. Use this once you have an idea. You need to know a little bit about what you are looking for, say, for example, Heraclius solidus, then it works well. Just Heraclius will get you too few entries. Heraclius, solidus, Constantinople, is even better. I will upload some charts of the Byzantine court hierarchy to help with that.
Depending on the question you choose to answer you might want to compare what you are looking at to material in other media. Here are links to some great collections of Byzantine art: Textiles – https://www.doaks.org/resources/textiles Manuscripts – https://www.doaks.org/resources/manuscripts-in-the-byzantine-collection Byzantine art – http://museum.doaks.org/IT_1202 – https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/keywords/byzantium/
