Living by the Coins

Roman Life in the Light of Coin Finds and Archaeology within a Residential Quarter of Carnuntum

Cristian Gazdac, Franz Humer

• Publisher: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9783990120927
• eBook ISBN: 9783990120941
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

After a forty-year gap following the excavations of the 1950s (and even earlier), large archaeological campaigns have been carried out since the 1990s in a quarter (also known as "Spaziergarten", "insula VI"and "Open-Air Museum") of the former "civilian" Roman town of Carnuntum. These new excavations have produced a large quantity of coins. Some of these findings have been published in the monumental volume Numismata Carnuntina - FMRÖ III.2 together with the rest of the coins found at Carnuntum in older collections. The new excavations were carried out according to new methodologies, as nowadays it is a desideratum to create numismatic corpora that should gather as much information as possible about each coin, not only from a numismatic point of view but also from an archaeological one. The aim is to provide more details about both general and specific patterns of the Roman economy, society and history of a residential quarter in a Roman town. Thus, the style of publication of coins - with a large scale of archaeological units (e.g. Roman streets, dwellings public edifices) and their stratigraphy - was chosen in this book in order to provide as much information as possible about each coin; in doing so we try to provide scholars with material and evidence that may help them to obtain a realistic picture of monetary circulation. Similarly, the coin as seen through an archaeological context may serve for a better understanding of the dating of archaeological phases, especially to illustrate when the coin may be useful within an archaeological context, as well as to highlight the pitfalls that one may come across if this artefact is misunderstood within the archaeological picture. We hope that this book will be a useful tool for numismatists, archaeologists, historians and any reader interested in understanding Roman life through coinage.

NUMISMATIC COMMENTS

The archaeological excavations that took place in the last decades in a civilian quarter – conventionally named “Spaziergarten”/Open-Air Museum – of the former Roman metropolis of Carnuntum in Pannonia Superior (today, Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria) (see maps 1-6, 11) have produced a large quantity of coins. At the same time, the “old” excavations, as well as the museum collection, have contributed the quantity of coins retrieved from this area.

The style of publication of coins, organised by archaeological findspots and contexts, was chosen in order to provide as much information as possible about each coin, so, one may figure out the real picture of monetary circulation, the dating of archaeological phases or any other aspect that the coin and its archaeological context can offer.

The book brings together information about the coins found during the excavations of various parts of this civilian quarter site from 1948 to 2011, lists of coins from past excavations and collection of the local museum and previous publications of some of the coin finds from the site. Nevertheless, the real number of coins was much larger, but owing to various reasons they have not survived to present times.

In spite of this, the number of coin finds, almost 2,000, can provide useful information for numismatists, archaeologists and ancient historians. In fact, the main aim of this corpus is to provide as much archaeological information as possible for each coin found within this civilian quarter available for publication. Consequently, in the future one can use the corpus not only for the “traditional” information revealed by coins (e. g. issuer, denomination, dating, type) but also for other related issues, such as likely coin circulation, coins and archaeological context and the date of building/destruction phases.

Some of these issues can already be seen in the present publication.

In order to extract meaningful results, a decision was taken to use simple methods that could be applied to all the numismatic material and the units studied for this quarter of the town of Carnuntum. Most of the recent methods are based on detailed databases. In some of these studies, the data available is inadequate in quantity and/or quality. The potential of such shortcomings inadequacies to undermine statistical analyses has already been pointed out by K. Lockyear.³⁵

The site finds are grouped by the units of the site studied – a quarter of the former Roman “civilian” town of Carnuntum (see maps 2–6).

The catalogues are similarly organized by units of the quarter under study. Within the catalogues, the material is chronologically displayed by issuer. Each coin is presented by date, denomination, mint, reference, technical details (axis, sizes, weight), inventory number (temporary no. or Museum Carnuntinum no. [MC], year of finding), archaeological context, and bibliography (see catalogues).

In the tables, for each of the units the site finds are separated by denominations. The fluctuation of coin finds over time is calculated by the number of pieces/issuer as well as the division of the number of coin finds issued in a chronological period by the number of years of that period (see tables). The results are illustrated as graphs (see graphs).

Concerning the general situation of the site finds, the analyses gather the site finds from all units of the quarter under study; the coins have been grouped by issuers/ emperors chronological sequences established (see below). The proportion of different denominations in mints in the coin finds was calculated by the percentage of the total number of coin finds and ordered chronologically. The total number of coin finds in a chronological sequence is divided by the number of years of that sequence (see tables).

The overall numismatic spectrum of the civilian quarter studied in this book indicates a large rank of issuers from the Roman Republic to the first decades of the 5th century AD. (see tab. 24–25; fig. 22–23).

Apart from separating the coins by issuer, for this study the chronological framework has been chosen in accordance with Roman history and monetary policy.

Up to the early 3rd century, the chronological sequences are most easily formulated in terms of the length of imperial reigns following the models of J. Casey and R. Reece³⁶, but some modifications have been made to reflect the nature of evidence available for this area under study. The Severan dynasty is divided into two periods: the first group contains the reigns from Septimius Severus to Macrinus (AD 193 – 218); the second one includes the reigns from Elagabalus to Maximinus I Thrax (AD 218 – 238). The reasons for this particular chronological division were firstly the possibility of separating the coins of Caracalla from those of Elagabalus,³⁷ a variation of coin find/year for the periods AD 193 – 218 and AD 218 – 238, and secondly the monetary changes in these periods, i. e. first issues of antoniniani under Caracalla and Macrinus and the hiatus in production of this denomination from Severus Alexander until Maximinus I Thrax. The reigns of Gordian III (AD 238 – 244) and Philip I (AD 244 – 249) are studied separately based on the monetary changes that took place in these periods: the supremacy of the antoninianus over the denarius starting with the reign of Gordian III; the opening of the local official mint of Viminacium in AD 239³⁸, which had some influence on the supply of bronze denominations at Carnuntum. The next chronological period, AD 249–253, is based on the type of commonly found coins, i. e. antoniniani and bronze issues of Viminacium. The period after Trebonianus Gallus/ Aemilianus was divided in two groups, AD 253–268 and AD 268–275, following the monetary changes represented by in an abundant quantity of antoniniani/radiates for the time of Valerianus I-Gallienus. The period of AD 268–275 was selected owing to the peak recorded for the low content of a “silver” coinage, which ended with the reform of Aurelian³⁹. The following period, AD 275-284, is characterised by radiates of slightly higher silver content. Owing to the state of publication at the moment, it is difficult to have a clear picture of the situation before and after the monetary reforms of Diocletian and Constantine I, thus analysis has been carried out by the periods AD 284-305 and AD 306-337. Despite a kind of homogeneous pattern of coin finds and a large dominance of conventionally coins named “aes 3”, the following chronological segments, AD 337–364 and AD 364–383, are distinguished by these periods due to the various frequencies of coins minted in those periods discovered at various findspots of the civilian quarter under study. Owing to the extreme scarcity of coin finds the last periods, AD 383–408 and AD...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titel
• Impressum
• Contents
• Introduction
• Carnuntum – the Reborn City of Emperors
• Numismatic Comments
• Abbreviations and Bibliography
• Technical Abbreviations
• Photo credits
• Tables
• Graphs
• Maps
• Catalogues
• Plates