Does anyone know anything about the status of the Medieval European Coinage publishing project? MEC 1 was published in 1986 and MEC 14 was 1998. Their website hasn't changed in years. At this rate I will be nearly 200 years old when the last volume (17) is published. It would be a shame if the project was discontinued.

Medieval European Coinage is a major international work of reference for medieval numismatists, archaeologists and historians. The series of some 17 volumes, published by Cambridge University Press, will cover the coinage of Europe c. 450 to c. 1500, region by region. The MEC Project will produce the first comprehensive survey of European medieval coinages since the Traité de numismatique du moyen âge of Engel and Serrure (3 vols, 1891-1905).

Each volume of MEC provides an authoritative, up-to-date account of the coinage of an area, written by experts in the field. The text is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue of the coins in the unrivalled collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, largely formed by Professor Philip Grierson.

MEC certainly suffered a set-back from the extended illness and death of Mark Blackburn. Elina Screen of St. Andrews University, Scotland, has taken on the general editorship and we are hoping that things can get back on schedule. My understanding is that the following volumes are in press and well on their war to appearing in print:

6. The Iberian Peninsula, edited by A. Balaguer and M. Crusafont

7 (i) The Low Countries I: The Early Coinage and the Pre-Burgundian South, edited by P. Grierson and S. Boffa.

7 (ii) The Low Countries II: The North and the Burgundian Period, edited by P. Grierson and S. Boffa.

12. Italy I: Northern Italy, edited by W. R. Day Jr., M. Matzke and A. Saccocci.

My volume, 13, Central Italy, is still very much in the research stage.