Author Description

"Joe [Cribb, of the British Museum] has had a 'hand' in a variety of numismatic activities. Starting with Chinese coins, Joe moved to many other themes and subjects within the broader range of 'Oriental' numismatics and history, making invaluable contributions to highly controversial subject areas, like the inception of coinage in the Indian subcontinent and the chronological questions facing complex coinages in Central Asia. Significantly, Joe Cribb's academic interests not just centre around the broad theme of 'Money', which encompasses numismatics, but also go much beyond. Covering a vast time and space, the essays here deal with the most ancient of the sub-continental coinages as well as those that deal with the most modern and conventional forms of money, like banknotes. Among other specificities, the essays explore socio-historical themes associated with coinage, study iconography through coins, examine royal as well as religious coins icons seen on Kushan coins, offer fresh interpretation of the 'Lion Pillar' inscription from Mathura, and highlight the role/utility of coins in historical reconstruction from a conceptual perspective, analyzing the deployment of coins to underline archaeological and historical periods. Several other themes examined here include minting technology in Mughal India, pagoda coins of South East India, Kuninda and Kota coins of the Punjab, or how coins were used as a tool of diplomacy in the colonial India" --