“Simone Scheers, a biographical sketch”, in J. van Heesch & I. Heeren (Eds.), Coinage in the Iron Age. Essays in honour of Simone Scheers, Spink, London, 2009, p. viii-xi.

Professor Simone Scheers (Leuven, January 2009) Simone Scheers, a biographical sketch JOHAN VAN HEESCH Simone Scheers is without doubt one of the most influential numismatists of the 20th century. She has devoted her entire career to Iron Age numismatics and it is unthinkable that there could be anyone working in this field of research who has not used her work. She is one of those rare numismatists whose name, followed by a catalogue number, is always used to refer to a particular type, which made conferences on Celtic coinage in the presence of Simone a strange experience: almost every speaker pronounced her name innumerable times while showing a picture of Scheers 57 or Scheers 67 and so on. In this biography, followed by a list of her published work by Harry Dewit, I propose to describe only briefly her brilliant career as a researcher. Simone Marie Scheers was born on August 1st 1943 in Diegem, a village near Brussels (Belgium). After following a classical education, studying Greek and Latin in secondary school, she went to the University of Leuven where she graduated with a masters degree in Ancient History in 1966. After also obtaining a masters in archaeology, she acquired her PhD in Archaeology and Art History (Oudheidkunde en Kunstgeschiedenis) in Leuven in June 1973. Her interest in numismatics emerged while attending the courses of Professor Paul Naster (KULeuven), a well known specialist in Greek coinage and former curator of the Brussels Coin Cabinet. He brought Simone into contact with another well known researcher, Dr. Colbert de Beaulieu, a medical doctor but more widely known to the scientific community as an authority on Iron Age numismatics. For her masters thesis Paul Naster proposed what turned out to be a very rewarding subject: Iron Age coins inspired by those of the Roman republic. The result was much applauded, as demonstrated by its prompt publication in 1969 as Les monnaies de la Gaule inspirées de celles de la République romaine (see bibliography by H. Dewit in this volume, no. 3). The book is a meticulous inventory of Celtic coins with a Roman prototype and Simone Scheers immediately set the highest standards of cataloguing, a tradition she continued in all her future work; it also provided scholars with a series of secure fixed points for the study of the chronological evolution of Iron Age coins. Immediately after obtaining her masters degree, Simone Scheers became an assistant to Professor Naster and started working on her PhD, on what would become her magnum opus: a study and inventory of Iron Age coins from Gallia Belgica, covering large parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Germany. Although Colbert de Beaulieu considered the subject too vast, she persisted and believed that examining these series in as wide a context as possible was the only possible way to understand them. The work she undertook was immense. Travelling alone through many different countries and especially from one provincial museum to another, by train, bus and on foot, was not an easy job. She examined even the smallest museum holdings and was sometimes forgotten and locked up in a museum (Evreux), found coins all mixed up in wooden boxes (Le Havre) and had orientation problems in hotel rooms and difficulty in remembering her room number as a result of changing hotels all the time… Simone Scheers obtained her PhD in 1973 and became shortly afterwards (1974) a research fellow with a fixed position at the National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO-FNRS); by 1976 she had prepared her thesis for publication in Annales littéraires de l’Université de Besançon. The book (Traité de numismatique celtique. II. La Gaule Belgique; Paris, 1977, 986 p., 28 pl = no. 23) was an instant success. It was of major importance at the time and remains so today, for it was the first time that such a wide-ranging catalogue not only contained detailed descriptions of coins and specimens kept in museum collections but also included provenances and distribution maps of all coin types. Never before had Iron Age coins been studied so comprehensively across such a large area, and for the first time researchers were able to examine circulation areas and attributions to ‘tribes’ and populations of these often highly enigmatic series. Scheers also presented a detailed study of her material, and proposed a chronological framework for Belgic coinage as well as a historical interpretation; for the first time the Iron Age coinages of Belgic Gaul could be fully used as a historical source. That is not to say, of course, that all problems have been solved or that the dating of these coins is firmly established or that the distribution maps cannot be updated, but the work she did was novel and fundamental and the book still remains a basic tool for x JOHAN VAN HEESCH further research. Scheers constructed an evolutionary model for Celtic gold coinages derived from the gold stater of Philip II of Macedon, which developed from close copies of their Greek prototypes in the 3rd century BC to almost totally disintegrated images by the first century. One of her main theses was the multiplicity of coin issuing authorities during Caesar’s Gallic War, accompanied by a surge in coin production and the end of gold issues once the war was over. Her chronological framework and the link with the Gallic War has been doubted by some but it influenced and still influences the research of major scholars in the field such as Colin Haselgrove, Nico Roymans, John Sills and many others. As one of the major accomplishments of her thesis was the recording of provenanced coins accompanied by distribution maps, it is interesting to consider that the editor of the book, the University Press of Besançon (France), originally refused to publish so voluminous a work (almost 1000 pages) and proposed to omit most maps and provenances from the catalogue! The Paris edition of the Traité was printed in only 500 copies that rapidly sold out. In 1983 a reprint was published by Peeters in Leuven, with an amended title: La Gaule Belgique. Numismatique celtique (no. 53). After the publication of her Traité, Scheers’ career focused on research and teaching. Research concentrated on the Gallic imitations of the Philippus (e.g. no. 83) and the study of coin use and coin circulation, especially in Northern Gaul. If we can single out just one publication, mention can be made of an important study on coin circulation published in the Revue belge de Numismatique in 1996: ‘Frappe et circulation monétaire sur le territoire de la future civitas Tungrorum’ (no. 106). It updated the data from her Traité and was completed with find evidence of coins from outside Gallia Belgica but found within the region. Throughout her career Simone continued publishing catalogues of both important and more minor collections of Celtic coins, providing colleagues with a high standard of descriptions and images of otherwise hard to find material. Besides a very useful update of de la Tour’s work on Celtic coins published in 1992 (no. 82) we should mention the invaluable catalogue of the Danicourt collection in Péronne (France) and her inventory of the Iron Age coins from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyons (no. 103, co-author Claude Brenot for the coins of Massalia), published in 1996 and an important reference work for Iron Age coinages from the whole of Gaul. Scheers continued to be employed by the National Fund for Scientific Research until her retirement in 2004 but from 1978 onwards she also started teaching at the University of Leuven (KULeuven) where she became a (part-time) professor from 1984 onwards, taking over the numismatic courses once given by Professor Naster. One course dealt with the coinages of Ancient Greece and Rome and a second one focused on Western Europe from the Iron Age to the 18th century. Teaching led her to be interested in other periods also and her help was often solicited for a variety of archaeological projects involving numismatic finds. This led her to the study and publication of coin finds from modern Belgium, e.g. these found in the Holy Mary cathedral of Antwerp and published in 1991 (with Tony Oost, no. 79). Equally important for the numismatic community are the catalogues of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins found at Sagalassos in Turkey published from 1993 onwards (nos. 87, 88, 97, 110 and 121) or those from the Roman town of Herdonia (Ordona) in Italy from 1974 onwards (nos. 15, 16, 68, 92 and 109). Published numismatic data from these regions are thin on the ground and the interest of these finds cannot be overemphasized. Throughout this time Simone Scheers always continued her research on Iron Age coinages and for anybody who has seen her office at home, it is clear that this is a research institution in itself. She has a formidable library, where even the smallest publication on Celtic coins can be found, but her scholarly archives not only contain books and files but also comprehensive documentation on Iron Age coin finds from all over Gaul, plus around 10,000 plaster casts! Simone has always tried to present her findings to a larger audience and did not hesitate in accepting lectures at colloquia, congresses or for a more general public. From 1969 onwards she participated with remarkable regularity at the Journées numismatiqes of the French Numismatic Society, organised each year in June. More than once she was asked to contribute to the Survey of Numismatic Research, a series published at each International Numismatic Congress that summarizes progress in numismatic research. No congress or workshop on Iron Ages coinages could be held without her and most of her talks resulted in an important publication (e.g. nos. 120, 132, 136). She was also an active member of the Royal Numismatic Society of Belgium (treasurer from 1982 to 1986 and secretary from 1986 to 1989) and member of several foreign numismatic societies as those of France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland SIMONE SCHEERS, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xi and so many others. It is not surprising then that she has been honoured in several ways by her colleagues in Belgium and abroad. In 1968 she obtained a travelling grant from the Belgian government, in 1979 the prize of the Cercle d’études numismatiques in Brussels, in 1983 she received the Vermeil medal of the French Numismatic Society and in 1984 the Derek Allen Award from the British Academy. In 1996 she became an honorary fellow of the French Numismatic Society. Simone Scheers has always been a worker bee, not concerned with career moves or interested in publishing only in the most prestigious journals. Her real interest lay in doing research on Celtic coins, in helping students and archaeologists in correctly publishing coin finds and trying to interest others in her chosen field of research. After her retirement in 2004 she faced health problems which, for a while, interrupted her desire to reengage actively in her longest lasting love: the coinages of Celtic Gaul. At the moment of writing (2009) she is still updating her documentation on coin finds, especially those from the territory of the Nervii. She is also actively involved in a major project with colleagues from the Netherlands aimed at publishing several major Iron Age gold hoards from Northern Gaul (Thuin I, II & III, Fraire, Heers and Maastricht). This book of essays then is dedicated to the ‘mother of Celtic numismatics’ and contains 28 contributions of great interest written by former colleagues and younger numismatists that continue the work started by Simone and will make her name live for generations to come. The editors of these essays would like to express their thanks to Philip Skingley of Spink, to all the authors for their collaboration and their patience, for due to unforeseen circumstances the book took longer to produce than originally planned, and also to all other friends and colleagues who expressed their wish to participate but were cruelly refused by the editors, as they wanted this work to be a collection of essays dealing solely with Celtic Iron Age coinages.