Andrew Michael Burnett, CBE , FSA , FBA (born 23 May 1952) is a British numismatist and museum curator, who specialises in Roman coins. He was Deputy Director of the British Museum from 2003 to 2013, and Keeper of its Department of Coins and Medals from 1992 to 2003. [1] [2] He was president of the Royal Numismatic Society from 2013 to 2018. [3]
Burnett was born on 23 May 1952 to Margaret and Sir John Harrison Burnett. He was educated at Fettes College, a private school in Edinburgh, Scotland. [4] He studied Literae Humaniores (ancient history and philosophy) at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. [4] [5] He continued his studies at the Institute of Archaeology, graduating from the University of London with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. [4] [6]
In 1974, Burnett joined the British Museum as a research assistant in the Department of Coins and Medals. He was made assistant keeper in 1979, promoted to deputy keeper in 1990, before finally serving as keeper and head of department from 1992 to 2003. [4] He was then Deputy Director of the British Museum from 2002 to 2013. [7] Since 2013, he has been an honorary professor at University College London. [4] [5]
In addition to his museum work, he has been active in the Royal Numismatic Society: he was secretary from 1983 to 1990, vice-president from 1999 to 2004, and served as its president from 2013 to 2018. [4] [8] He has been an honorary vice-president since 2019. [4] He was also President of The Roman Society from 2008 to 2012, and President of the International Numismatic Commission from 1997 to 2003. [5]
On 6 May 1982, Burnett was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). [9] In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [2] In the 2012 New Year Honours, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to the British Museum and numismatics". [10] In 2020, he was awarded the Derek Allen Prize by the British Academy "for his outstanding contribution to the development of the study of coinage of the Roman Empire and a career of public service". [11]
A Festschrift was published in his honour in 2015. It was edited by Roger Bland and Dario Calomino, and was titled "Studies in Ancient Coinage in Honour of Andrew Burnett". [12]
The history of ancient Greek coinage can be divided into four periods: the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic and the Roman. The Archaic period extends from the introduction of coinage to the Greek world during the 7th century BC until the Persian Wars in about 480 BC. The Classical period then began, and lasted until the conquests of Alexander the Great in about 330 BC, which began the Hellenistic period, extending until the Roman absorption of the Greek world in the 1st century BC. The Greek cities continued to produce their own coins for several more centuries under Roman rule. The coins produced during this period are called Roman provincial coins or Greek Imperial Coins.
Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson, FBA was a British numismatist.
Bernard Harold Ian Halley Stewart, Baron Stewartby, was a British Conservative Party politician and numismatist. He was the Member of Parliament for Hitchin from February 1974 to 1983, and for North Hertfordshire from 1983 to 1992. He sat in the House of Lords from 1992 to 2015.
The British Museum Department of Coins and Medals is a department of the British Museum involving the collection, research and exhibition of numismatics, and comprising the largest library of numismatic artefacts in the United Kingdom, including almost one million coins, medals, tokens and other related objects. The collection spans the history of coinage from its origins in the 7th century BC to the present day, and is representative of both Eastern and Western numismatic traditions.
Philip Grierson, FBA was a British historian and numismatist, emeritus professor of numismatics at Cambridge University and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College for over seventy years. During his long and extremely prolific academic career, he built the world's foremost representative collection of medieval coins, wrote very extensively on the subject, brought it to much wider attention in the historical community and filled important curatorial and teaching posts in Cambridge, Brussels and Washington DC.
The Treasure Valuation Committee (TVC) is an advisory non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) based in London, which offers expert advice to the government on items of declared treasure in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland that museums there may wish to acquire from the Crown.
Derek Fortrose Allen was Secretary of the British Academy from 1969 to 1973 and Treasurer of that organisation from 1973 until his death.
Joe Cribb is a numismatist, specialising in Asian coinages, and in particular on coins of the Kushan Empire. His catalogues of Chinese silver currency ingots, and of ritual coins of Southeast Asia were the first detailed works on these subjects in English. With David Jongeward he published a catalogue of Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian and Kidarite Hun coins in the American Numismatic Society New York in 2015. In 2021 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Numismatics at Hebei Normal University, China.
Harold Mattingly was a British classical scholar, specialising in art history and numismatics. His interests included the history of Ancient Rome, Etruscan and Roman currency, and the Roman historian Tacitus.
Martin Jessop Price was a British numismatist who was made a Merit Deputy Keeper of the British Museum in 1978, a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, 1986-87. In 1992 he was awarded the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a firsts in classics. In 1961, he won a Greek government scholarship which introduced him to the British School of Athens. In 1966, he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, under Kenneth Jenkins, and was eventually appointed Deputy Keeper in 1978 which is a position he held until September 1994 when he became Director at the British School of Athens until his death.
John Allan, was a British numismatist and scholar of Sanskrit. Allan was a noted numismatist and produced the first systematic study of the coins the Gupta Empire, which remains a standard reference today.
A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics/coins. Numismatists include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholars who use coins and other currency in object-based research. Although use of the term numismatics was first recorded in English in 1799, people had been collecting and studying coins long before this, all over the world.
John Philip Cozens Kent, was a British numismatist and archaeologist.
Roger Farrant Bland, is a British curator and numismatist. At the British Museum, he served as Keeper of the Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure from 2005 to 2013, Keeper of the Department of Prehistory and Europe from 2012 to 2013, and Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory from 2013 to 2015. Since 2015, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Leicester and a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.
Marion MacCallum Archibald was a British numismatist, author and for 33-years a curator at the British Museum. She was the first woman to be appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Coins and Medals and is regarded as a pioneer in what had previously been a male-dominated field. Her 70th birthday was celebrated with the publication of a book of essays authored by 30 of her colleagues, collaborators and former students for whom Marion's name was "synonymous ... with the study of Anglo-Saxon coins at the British Museum".
The Derek Allen Prize is awarded by the British Academy. It was founded in 1976 to honour Derek Allen, FBA, who was secretary (1969–73) and treasurer (1973–75) of the British Academy. It was established by his widow and sons to recognise outstanding scholarly achievement in Allen's principal interests: numismatics, Celtic studies and musicology. Although awarded annually, the prize rotates between the three disciplines. Recipients are awarded £400.
David Michael Metcalf was a British academic and numismatist. He was the director of the Heberden Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum, a fellow of Wolfson College and Professor of Numismatics at the University of Oxford. He held the degrees of MA, DPhil and DLitt from Oxford. He died in October 2018 at the age of 85.
Andrew R. Woods is a British numismatist, archaeologist and curator specialising in early medieval and Viking coinage. He is the senior curator of the Yorkshire Museum and was formerly the curator of numismatics at the York Museums Trust.
Sir Edward Stanley Gotch Robinson, FBA (1887–1976), usually known as (Sir)Stanley Robinson, was a numismatist, specializing in Greek and Roman coins. He was Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum.
Colin Mackennal Kraay, FBA, FSA was an English numismatist. He was the Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum from 1975 to his death in 1982.
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