Category: Treasures

Secrets of largest Roman coin hoard in Spain revealed

Ancient, Treasures

Six years after the discovery of a massive treasure of Roman coins in Tomares, a suburb of Seville, Spain, the first report of the findings has been released by archaeologists and numismatists from the University of Seville.

The hoard was discovered during city work on the El Zaudín public park. A mechanical digger unearthed 19 large amphorae filled with Roman coins, breaking 10 of them in the process. Workers alerted authorities and archaeologists were promptly dispatched to salvage the coins from the broken amphorae and recover the intact amphorae without damaging them.

All of the amphorae, intact and broken, and the coins were transported to the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Seville for documentation and conservation. From their discovery in 2016 through 2019, experts cleaned, conserved and stored the treasure. The nine intact amphorae were numbered and set aside and are still unopened as of now, although a microcamera was threaded into them to confirm they are indeed filled with the same quantity and types of coins as the others. Amphorae 10 and 11 were broken but their coin content remained intact within. the microexcavation of the coin groups from 10 and 11 found they contain a similar number coins: around 2,800. The coins from the eight amphorae that were completely fragmented tallied up to 22,288. Another 102 coins were found in a later exploration of the find site. They were scattered, but given the context, they are likely to have been part of the hoard.

Archaeologists estimate that the total number of coins in the 19 amphorae is more than 53,000. They are tetrarchic nummi, issued after Diocletian’s financial and monetary reform in 294, but before the reform of 313. A selection of 3,000 coins from the broken amphorae, plus the 2,798 coins in amphora 11 and the 102 scattered coins were cleaned, numbered, photographed, catalogued and underwent metal composition analysis. This sample is more than 10% of the total coinage estimate, giving archaeologists a sufficiently reliable basis for observations that can be extrapolated to the entire hoard.

The excavation of the two broken amphorae with largely undisturbed contents revealed that they were both filled in the same manner. The coins were dropped in, forming horizontal layers that stopped before reaching the neck. To ensure there were as few gaps as possible in the layers, the upright amphorae were shaken side-to-side. Coins shifted into the lateral spaces, creating quasi-vertical lines around the edges of the horizontal layers. This strongly suggests that they were filled in a single operation, rather than gradually accumulated. This is confirmed by the absence of any chronological order of coins in the layers. The newest coins were frequently found in the deepest layers, in fact.

The coins date to between 294 and 311 A.D. All of the emperors — both Augustuses and Caesars — of the tetrarchic period are represented on the coinage: Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius, Galerius, Constantine, Severus, Maximinus, Licinius and Maxentius. Diocletian’s coins are by far the most common in the hoard. The empire’s main mints are all represented as well: Rome, Carthage, Aquileia, Treveris, Ticinum, Lugdunum, Londinium, Siscia, Ostia, Alexandria, Cyzicus, Thessalonika, Heraklea, Nicomedia, Antioch.

A geomagnetic and stratigraphic survey of the site found the remains of a 3rd-4th century brick building (opus latericium) with buttressed walls typical of warehouses of rural agricultural estates. The structure had a front portico supported by columns that was paved with a lime floor. The 19 amphorae crammed full of coins appear to have been cached under the floor and the lime layer used to seal them in. The building was abandoned in the 4th century and it was dismantled for reuse of its construction materials in the 6th century. Nobody noticed there was a gigantic treasure hidden under the floor.

The amphorae had been placed with perfect regularity standing upright one next to the other. The vessels are all of the same type and origin: olive oil storage and transport amphorae of local production, the agricultural lifeblood of the area and the likely function of the rural estate where the coins were collected and stashed.

The prevalence of coins from the reign of Diocletian may be an important clue to why they were hoarded in the first place.

The answer could be because as the emperors went by and inflation grew, the weight of the pieces and their percentage of silver fell. In the year 294, a pound of silver was used to mint 32 coins; in 307 this number grew to 40, between 307 and 309 a pound of silver went into making 48 coins, and between 310 and 311, the figure had shot up to 72. In other words, the owner of the treasure preferred to hoard Diocletian’s money, with more silver in it. On average, the coins were made with an alloy of 88% bronze, 4% silver, 3.7% tin and 3.3% lead.

And why so many in the same hands? The researchers explain that Diocletian’s reform triggered “political uncertainty and conflicts between the rulers.” Added to this were territorial and social clashes that would gradually lead to a concentration of property and a devaluation of this type of currency against gold. “These and other factors explain the large amount of coins that were found, as only in large numbers could payments of a certain level be undertaken.” In other words, to make any important financial transaction, a huge number of coins was necessary. And more so if you owned a villa that functioned as an agri-food center.

The Tomares Treasure is one of the largest coin collections from the Tetrarchy (a system of government introduced by Diocletian that involved two emperors and their successors ruling at the same time) in the entire imperial territory. “It is only surpassed in size by that of Misurata, in Libya, and constitutes a top-tier testimony of monetary circulation at the beginning of the 4th century AD in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Its composition is also an immense archive in which to study the vicissitudes (devaluations, changes in weight) of the economic policy of the emperors of the Tetrarchy, a time when the manipulation of currency was an important economic resource in the hands of public authorities.”

Viking hack silver hoard found in Norway

Medieval, Treasures

A hoard of hack silver from the Viking era (8th-11th c.) has been discovered in Stjørdal, central Norway. It consists of 46 objects, all of them silver. Only two of them are intact — whole finger rings — while the rest are broken pieces of coins, bracelets, a braided necklace, chains and wire. They were collected and cut or broken to use for the silver weight. Most examples of hack silver hoards found in Scandinavia contain a fragment from each larger object. This hoard is unusual for containing several fragments from the same object.

The hoard was discovered last December by metal detectorist Pawel Bednarski. He found the two small silver rings first, then more and more pieces began to emerge. Ultimately Bednarski pulled 46 objects from the ground, all of them barely buried between an inch and three inches beneath the surface. After rinsing the clay off of one of the pieces, he realized he had found something of archaeological importance and reported the discovery to municipal authorities.

This is a rather exceptional find. It has been many years since such a large treasure find from the Viking Age has been made in Norway, says archaeologist and researcher Birgit Maixner at the NTNU Science Museum. […]

This find is from a time when silver pieces that were weighed were used as means of payment. This system is called the weight economy, and was in use in the transition between the barter economy and the coin economy, explains Maixner.

The coin economy in continental Europe continued even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but in Norway there were no coins minted until the late 9th century. It was a barter economy until the end of the 8th century when the weight economy began to take hold. It was far more agile than barter because instead of having to manage the bulk of goods to be traded, small pieces of silver are easily packed and carried. Valuation is also far easier, requiring nothing more than a scale.

The total of the silver weight in the hoard is 42 grams, which according to the Gulating Act (a collection of Norwegian land laws dating back to around 900 A.D.) would buy you .6 of a cow. Most of the objects weighed less than a gram, so it seems likely they had already been used as currency. Was this perhaps the change drawer of a merchant?

[T]he find contains an almost complete wide, band-shaped bangle, divided into eight pieces. Such broadband bangles, as archaeologists call them, are thought to have been developed in Denmark in the 8th century.

“We can imagine that the owner has prepared for trading by dividing the silver into appropriate weight units. That the person in question had access to entire broadband bracelets, a primary Danish object type, may indicate that the owner was in Denmark before the person traveled up to the Stjørdal area,” says Maixner.

Another unusual feature is the age of the Arabic coins. In an average Norwegian treasure find from the Viking Age, approx. three quarters of the Islamic coins minted between 890 and 950 AD. Only four out of seven coins from this find have been dated, but these date from the end of the 8th century or the beginning of the 8th century to some time in the 8th century.

“The relatively high age of the Islamic coins, broadband bracelets and the large degree of fragmentation of most of the objects is more typical of treasure finds from Denmark than from Norway. These features also make it likely to assume that the treasure is from around 900 AD,” explains Maixner.

Gold coin hoard dispersed at auction

Modern(ish), Treasures

The Ellerby Hoard, the collection of more than 260 gold coins dating to between 1610 and 1727 that was discovered under the floorboards of a North Yorkshire couple’s kitchen, has been sold. As planned, each coin was put up for auction individually. The final total including fees was £754,000, more than triple the pre-sale estimate of £200,000-£250,000.

The highest hammer price was for the rarest coin: a 1720 George I guinea with a minting error that gives it two reverse sides instead of an obverse with a bust of the king and the reverse of four royal shields. The Reverse Brockage Guinea sold for £52,000. Another coin rarified by an error at the mint — a guinea with Charles II’s Latin name CAROLVS misspelled as CRAOLVS — sold for £8,000.

(Or was it an error? It may have been petty revenge, which makes it even cooler. So blatant a mistake would usually show signs of attempted correction, but instead the misplaced R is soundly double-punched. The coin was made in 1675, and mint employees would have had good reason to be disgruntled at that time. The crown had fallen so deeply into debt under Charles II that in 1672 he declared the Great Stop of the Exchequer, meaning the state simply stopped paying its debts. It was supposed to last a year. It lasted until March of 1675. The Great Stop caused mayhem in finance and banking, and a die-sinker at the mint must have felt the pinch as much as the gold merchants.

Anyway nobody else seemed to take much issue with the typo. There are only four examples of this coin ever to appear at auction, and all of them are in heavily circulated grades. The error wasn’t even noticed, not publicly at any rate, until a pair of them were exhibited at the Numismatic Society in 1867.)

So the sellers are happy, I guess, and dozens of buyers around the world are happy, but one of the largest hoards of 18th century English coins ever discovered is now dispersed. Still no word on what became of the earthenware cup they were hidden in for those just-shy-of-300 years.

Gold coin hoard in a cup found under kitchen floor

Modern(ish), Treasures

A couple in North Yorkshire hit the kind of jackpot every history nerd has dreamed of: they discovered an early 18th century coin hoard buried under the floorboards of their kitchen. With more than 260 gold coins dating to between 1610 and 1727, it is one of the largest hoards of English 18th century coins ever found.

They found the hoard in July 2019 after pulling up the kitchen floors in their 18th century home. Six inches beneath the concrete underfloor, they spotted what they thought was an old electrical wire but turned out to be the mouth of a salt-glazed earthenware cup about the size of a soda can with a broken handle. Packed inside this smallish beaker were 264 gold coins.

The couple contacted the London auction firm Spink & Son and their experts authenticated the coin hoard. They also researched the home’s history and identified the likely hoarders: wealthy Hull merchant Joseph Fernley and his wife Sarah Maister. Joseph died in 1725, Sarah in 1745, so it seems Sarah buried the hoard after her husband’s death. Secure banks and paper money were available when she chose the floorboards over a safety deposit box — the Bank of England had been founded in 1694, the year Joseph and Sarah got married — but clearly they mistrusted financial institutions in favor of collecting and caching gold currency.

The Fernley-Maisters may have had some grounds for skepticism. The Bank of England was established in order to raise a loan of £1.2 million to the government of King William III so that he could build Britain into a global naval power capable of taking on the indisputably superior French fleet. France’s navy had defeated England in the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 so soundly that it took control of the English Channel and caused a panic in Britain. The subscribers to the loan then became the Governors of the bank. For a family who built wealth by trading in goods imported from the Baltic, this probably looked like shenanigans were afoot.

The coins were well-circulated before they were collected and there is significant wear on most of them. They weren’t particularly rare either. It’s more like the collectors stashed their 50s and 100s regularly, including older ones they came across still in circulation. The rarest coin is a 1720 George I guinea which had two reverse sides (two tails, no head) because of a minting error. A 1675 Charles II guinea where the king’s name is misspelled CRAOLVS instead of CAROLVS is also notable. In face value alone, the coins are worth £100,000, but adding up their current individual market values that figure more than doubles to £250,000 ($290,000).

Unfortunately we will soon have a chance to know what price this unique hoard will go for because it is going under the hammer at Spink & Son on October 7th. Yes, the dream come true has turned into this history nerd’s nightmare. The hoard fell through yet another hole in the Treasure Act. By law, coins are declared treasure if there are two or more of them (check) and if they are at least 300 years old. The coroner’s inquest ruled that because the youngest coin was 292 years old when the hoard was unearthed in 2019, the entire hoard was less than 300 years old and therefore the property of the homeowners to dispose of as they wish. It’s heartbreaking, but every coin is being sold individually. No word on what’s happening to the earthenware cup they were stashed in.

Pre-conquest Roman gold coin hoard found in Norfolk

Ancient, Treasures

A unique hoard of Roman gold coins buried decades before the Roman conquest of Britain has been discovered in Norfolk. Eleven aurei from the reign of Augustus were found by metal detectorists in a field near Norwich in the Norfolk Broads (a network of lakes and rivers) over several years. The first aureus was discovered in August 2017.

The coins are of two types. Both have laureate busts of Augustus on the obverse. Eight of the coins depict Augustus’ grandsons and heirs Gaius and Lucius Caesar standing with their hands on their shields and spears. They are flanked by a lituus (a crooked augury instrument like a bishop’s crozier) and a simpulum (a libation vessel). The type of coin was struck between 2 B.C. and 4 A.D. The second type dates to 9 B.C. and on the reverse features Gaius Caesar on a horse galloping past the army standards. He holds a sword and shield in his left hand. Both coin types were struck at Augustus’ mint in Lugdunum, Gaul, modern-day Lyons.

Even though they had been churned up and scattered by ploughing over the centuries, the coins were certainly grouped together in a single hoard originally. Not only are they are all aurei of Augustus from the same narrow date range, but they all bear the same mark: a tiny nick that was deliberately done to ensure the coin was solid gold and not a plated forgery.

They are in such good condition that they cannot have been in circulation very long when they were hoarded, and the absence of any later coins in the group suggests they were buried shortly after they were minted, maybe the first decade of the 1st century, predating the Roman conquest of 43 A.D.

At that time, the Britannic Iceni tribe ruled over what is now Norfolk. The Iceni would become famous for the 60-61 A.D. uprising against Rome led by their queen Boudica, but relations between the Iceni and the Roman Empire were positive six decades earlier. The Iceni were allies before the invasion and given preferred status after the conquest, so it’s eminently possible they had access to gold coins even when the general trend during this period was for Roman gold coins to be spent on luxury goods from the east, not for them to wander up north to the hinterlands.

Augustus vastly expanded the number of aurei struck. His uncle Julius Caesar had struck the first large-scale gold coinage in Rome as part of his Triumph celebrating his conquest of Gaul. Augustus systematized Roman coinage,  establishing consistently graduated denominations and striking large issues that were distributed throughout the empire.

Norfolk, however, was very much not the Roman Empire, and amassing 10 aurei in the first decade of the first century was no easy feat for anyone, let alone for the northern tribespeople. Iceni gold coins of this period were made of a much lower grade of gold, but Iceni jewelry like the Great Snettisham Torc used gold of high purity. A goldsmith looking for raw materials to make something like the torc would be ecstatic to get his hands on Roman aurei made of 20-carat gold. If the gold was being collected for reuse, that would also explain the consistent nick marks as the smith testing them for purity before melting them down to make something new with the gold.

The hoard has been acquired by the British Museum. The report of the find has been published in The Searcher and can be read here (pdf).