A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Republic, First Edition. Edited by Jane DeRose Evans. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Coins and the Archaeology of the Roman Republic

Jane DeRose Evans

chapter 7

1 Introduction

ask an archaeologist why excavation coins can be useful, and s/he will probably answer that s/he expects the numismatist to help date the strata (see e.g. rotroff, 1997; Walker, 1997). a few numismatists have begun the discussion on what coins mean on an archaeological site, but it is an area that is still greatly in need of development. Some of the silence is due to the specific language of numismatists, which can be daunting, even though there are now very good catalogs of coins minted in the republican period to help the scholar of the ancient world. however, an area that is sorely lacking is still the publication of excavations, in part because the cost of publishing bodies of coin data is higher than other bodies of data, and in part because there are few numismatists who are also field archaeologists. I will begin by discussing the reasons why coins are found in strata, and uses and problems of using coins to date strata, and in so doing, explore the different ways that numismatists can define the date the coin was issued. then I will explore how coins were used, including a particular method of use, in hoarding. Finally, I will end with a case study, the introduction of the Iberian denarius, to sketch out the ways excavated coins are combined with history, epigraphy and numismatic studies to provide both questions and answers about the roman world during the republican period.

2 Coins in Excavated Strata

certain inferences about the nature of coin loss and excavation finds have been established for ancient sites. excavation coins are differentiated into two overall categories, intentional

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and unintentional loss. Intentional losses (such as hoards or votive deposits) are rarer, and can be more closely tied to an individual’s or community’s behavior. Unintentional losses account for the huge bulk of the finds on any site. We expect that usually these are the coins that have been dropped as they were transferred from hand to pouch or hand to hand. the user of the coin may have been unaware of the loss, or he could have unsuccess-fully looked for the coin after his loss. almost all of these coins will be of low value.

there is less agreement on exactly how to analyze a body of excavation coins. Numismatists are well aware that there are many factors that influence the number of coins found on any site, and their comparisons of sites show that they are working with often unrecoverable factors to explain the data. For instance, the annual supply of coin is a figure that is estimated – sometimes by elaborate equations using the number of coin dies known – but the number of coins coming from the mint in any one year can never be precisely ascertained (see Buttrey, 1994; contra callataÿ, 1995). however, it is generally agreed that coins that were issued in large numbers will be more commonly found on archaeological excavations than smaller issues. By contrast, smaller issues will be overrepresented in museum collections, since they are of more interest to collectors.

Unintentional coin loss is affected by initial coin supply to the site, the size and the material of lost coins, the value of the coin (which may be a highly personal issue to the owner), and the methods of excavation. the initial supply of coin varies by time and place. coins are more commonly found in cities, towns and forts than in rural sites, where the initial supply would be much lower. In the sixth century, the only coins available to the romans were those minted in Magna Graecia. It was not until the third century that mints in Magna Graecia, etruria, the area around rome, and rome itself began to produce large numbers of coin; even so, rural sites and small towns show evidence of few unintentional coin losses. thus, the initial coin supply is composed of two things: how many coins were in circulation and were available to be lost; and how many coins came to the particular site. the town of cosa, founded in 273, is a good example of how these forces interplay. there are few third-century coins found in the excavations; the majority of the excavated coins were minted in rome (Buttrey, 1980). We would expect some coin loss since this is an urban site, founded by people who were probably used to transacting trade in coin. the coins also reflect the supply of coin from the mint of rome, the very city that sent out the colonists (see chapter 30).

Size matters. Smaller coins more easily escape the detection of the owner’s eyes. at cosa, a coin of Massalia (Marseilles) weighing over 16 g was not unintentionally lost, but is likely to have been an intentional deposit – the numismatist suggested “a casual accumulation” (Buttrey, 1980: 32). It was found with other, smaller bronze coins and a  large aes signatum weighing 12.97 g. thus, this accumulation was very likely an intentional deposit, and not an unintentional loss, due to the size of the Massaliot coin and the aes signatum.

Material matters, as does the place where the coin was deposited. Gold and silver coins are more rarely found on sites because of the higher value of the coin; we expect the individual knew that he had lost such a coin and thus would make a more thorough search for it, as is most famously recorded in a parable concerning a missing silver coin (Luke 15:8). all of the unintentional losses at cosa, save one, are bronzes, until the first century, when silver coins – denarii and quinarii – are added to the bronzes. a bronze coin is more easily camouflaged against the color of the earth on which it has fallen.

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coins are more commonly found in busy public spaces than in houses (where the owner has more time to look for an errant coin). they are also more commonly found in drains or ditches than on floors that are routinely swept. Deposits in these drains or ditches may contain more coins as water would sweep small coins into pipes, cisterns or sewers, especially if they were closed and thus not easily accessible to the person who lost the coin.

the rate at which coins are found by the archaeologist is determined by the methods used in excavation. experiments in different excavation methods have shown that up to 25% of the coins in any stratum can be missed – even during careful excavation – unless the newly excavated dirt is also sieved. this number is extrapolated from Imperial period strata, which would include more numerous small bronzes than in the republican period, but the point still holds (see reece, 1996: 342). In the underwater excavations from the Liri river, small coins were obtained only when the vacuum hose was used; in  some seasons, larger coins were simply picked from the river bed by hand (houghtalin, 1985). the problem of non-retrieval is exacerbated by identification rates of the recovered coins. If the stratum in which the coins were deposited was sandy, saline or acidic, the number of coins that can be assigned to a given decade falls, sometimes dramatically. If there are a number of illegible coins from a site, then the overall picture may be skewed. the conclusion one should draw from pondering all these variables is that the unintended lost coins from the site, commonly called “random” or “scattered” finds, does not give one a picture of the circulation of coin at any given period.

But we begin to assemble the picture of the coins in circulation, and thus the coins that are available to be deposited on ancient sites, by combining our knowledge of the  unintentional losses with that of intentional deposits. hoards (a group of coins intentionally placed and unintentionally left) are the first type of intentional deposit that springs to mind, and these have received the lion’s share of numismatic interest. But there are other coins that are deliberately left at a site – in graves, as votive deposits, as  foundation deposits of buildings or even in mast-steps of boats. Some of these intentional deposits may be made of coins that are taken directly from circulation, the most famous instance being the coins carried by those who perished in the fumes from Vesuvius in 79 ce (Duncan-Jones, 2003). Others may have been accumulated over a period of time, such as a lifetime of savings in a hoard. It is more likely that precious-metal coins are found in this type of deposit than in unintentional losses.

Votive deposits are very likely to have been mixed with other materials such as terracottas and jewelry, and can be deposited over a very long period of time (as in the Liri river deposit; houghtalin, 1985). the archaeologist cannot call any coin recovered from a sacred area a votive, as the coin may have been an unintentional loss when the visitor to the sacred area was purchasing an item. If there is specific behavior that marks the votive, such as defacement of the coin or placement in a collection box or area, the coin can be considered a votive deposit (Wigg-Wolf, 2005). But the placement of the votive deposit need not be confined to a box, pit or bag. pliny notes that he saw coins given as offerings thrown into the source of the clitumnus river in Umbria (Ep. VIII.8). there must be some evidence of intentionality for the votive deposit to be recognized as such – possibly by inclusion with other materials of a clearly votive nature. however, the story of eutropia visiting abraham’s well near the oak of Mamre should be borne in mind. according to the fifth-century ce historian Sozomen, she watched as worshippers threw coins, incense, bread and wine into

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the well as they prayed (Historia Ecclesiastica 2.4). Only the coins would remain for the archaeologist to find. thus, the type of deposit in which a coin is found should be analyzed by the numismatist in tandem with the archaeologist; in so doing, the numismatist may help clarify for the archaeologist what type of deposit was found.

3 Coins and Chronology

although republican coins can often be dated to within a decade or less of when they were struck, coins are not necessarily the best tool an archaeologist has to date the strata. part of the problem of assessing the date of the deposit is the wear or corrosion of the coin. Wear can be due to the effects of the coin’s use during its lifetime above ground, as it was passed from hand to hand or banged around in a bag. But the wear can also be caused by post-depositional effects on the coin, such as water or sand. Both kinds of wear can be detected by the flattening of the highest areas of relief. While the numismatist must carefully consider both lifetime wear and post-depositional wear, in reality there is no way to distinguish the two types. If the coin shows very little wear from handling, it may have been deposited soon after it was minted. If the relief is flattened, the wear could be caused by long use, or water erosion that results from a coin’s placement in a ditch or drain. the coin’s corrosion may be due to the matrix in which it was deposited. If it was embedded in a concrete subfloor, or recovered from sewers that funneled highly acidic liquids, the coin may have corroded quickly and thus become illegible; it might look more heavily used than another coin that was buried in a less corrosive deposit. corrosion can be affected by the temperature and humidity of the stratum. the degree of corrosion or wear is also influenced by the type of alloy from which the coin is made. Gold is immune to corrosion; silver less than copper alloys. It is the impurities in the silver or the copper alloy that corrode first, but corrosion can even consume an entire coin. the com-bination of corrosion and wear, especially when paired with harsh cleaning methods, can result in a large number of illegible coins from a site, even up to 90% recorded by the numismatist at the Imperial baths at hammat Gader in Israel (hirschfeld, 1997: xi; for notes on the conservation of coins, see andreau et al., 2002: 129–33, 152–6).

But the greatest problem with using the coins as a basis of dating a layer is determining the year when the coin was placed in the deposit. archaeologists agree that coins can only give us a terminus post quem for the deposit. What the coin cannot do, as is often forgot-ten, is tell us when the deposit was laid down – we do not know how many years passed after the coin was minted and before it was deposited. Sometimes a coin that is clearly much earlier than the rest of the coins in the deposit is called “residual.” these coins are considered “obsolete” or not legal tender, but it can be that they were used long after their date of minting because of their fineness or their module, or even because their types remained somewhat familiar. the user believed that he could continue to pass the coin as legal tender, even if it was clearly “out of date.” If such a coin is found, the numis-matist must consider the deposit – the coin could be part of a disturbed or secondary deposit (a robbed-out wall, or even an animal burrowing in the soil), or the coin could be present due to the reuse of the material in the stratum. Or the residual coin could be an indication that the coin continued to be used for legal tender long after we would have expected it to have passed out of circulation. the numismatist must check whether there

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is any other residual material found in the stratum. For example, a coin of philip II of Macedon (413–405) was found in the deposits of the Liri river, though the votive items probably only began to be thrown into the river after the foundation of the roman colony Minturnae in 295 (see Figure 19.3; houghtalin, 1985). this means that the coin of philip II was in circulation at least 100 years after it was minted, in order to have been deposited in the river. the coin of philip II, found by itself, would not give the archae-ologist any understanding of the date of use of the votive deposit in the Liri river.

the easiest place to look for residual coins is in hoards, where coins that do not seem consistent with the bulk of the hoard are excluded as “extraneous”; sometimes the numismatist will explain that the patina does not match the rest of the hoard. One problem with publishing hoards that have not been excavated is that the numismatist must be aware of the potential of the seller to slip some extra coins into the hoard before presentation to the numismatist (see e.g. crawford, 1969: 84, n. 172, and 105, n. 311). hoards, then, must be carefully analyzed and the numismatist must note why s/he is admitting or excluding coins from the non-excavated hoard.

although it is clear that some coins could circulate for many years beyond their initial minting, we still do not know how long, in general, a coin would remain in circulation. this lack of knowledge is partly due to our ignorance of where and how coins were introduced into circulation. Most numismatists work with the argument that silver coins were shipped to the armies and were used for administrative business within the city of rome; hence, we would expect to find newer issues and more denarii on urban sites and in forts (gold coins are rarely minted in the republic). Some numismatists also argue that silver coins were returned to rome in the form of taxes, to be remelted and reissued. Yet this argument has been refuted by scholars who would see most taxes paid in kind, not in coin (Duncan-Jones, 1990; contra hopkins, 1995/6). there is more debate on how and why bronze coins entered into circulation, an argument that is tempered by the long periods in the republic when bronze coins are not minted. the one thing that is safe to say is that the numismatist cannot give the excavation coin a terminus ante quem or the date the stratum was laid down. In the publication of excavation coins, the numismatist should work closely with the pottery and other specialists in interpreting the date of the layer, as well as with the archaeologist to determine the nature of the deposit.

Numismatists of the republican period weave together threads of coining tech-niques, metrology, epigraphy and iconography to interpret the coin. coining techniques, such as overstrikes or the style of the die, can help place the coin in time and space. Overstrikes – the striking of a type over the top of another coin – allow us to see what types of coins were available to the minters of the second coin and help us to understand the chronology of certain issues. thus, bronze coins of acarnania and Oeniadae in Macedonia were used as coin blanks by the romans after they had acquired the coins in the First Macedonian War, while they were simultaneously fighting hannibal. the era was one when coins were commonly overstruck, to save the minting city one step in the production of coins with their own images and legends (crawford, 1985: 58). this prac-tice dies out by the end of the Second punic War, as rome becomes less stressed and other coinages gradually begin to fail. It is possible that after this date, coins taken as booty were remelted, not overstruck (see below, on the Iberian denarius).

In the late fourth and third centuries, mints in etruria, Luceria, Sicily, Sardinia and elsewhere can be posited based on the needs of the army and the style and iconography

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of the die (see e.g. chapter 24). For instance, the first issue made by (or more precisely, for) the romans in the late fourth century was a bronze coin minted in Neapolis (Naples; crawford, 1974: no. 1), not yet controlled by the romans, as can be seen by the reverse type of the forepart of a man-headed bull walking right, an image found on coins of that city beginning c. 450. the obverse, the head of apollo, is done in a Greek style; the romans will not mint coins with heads of deities on them for another generation. the  only thing that actually identifies this coin as belonging to the romans is the inscription “romaion,” which is spelled out in Greek letters. the combination of style, iconography and epigraphy places the coin in the late fourth century, when Neapolis was allied with rome. Didrachms – silver coins weighing just over 7 g, a denomination found in the Greek cities of Magna Graecia – with the head of roma on the obverse and a victory on the reverse and the Latin inscription rOMaNO (crawford, 1974: no. 22) also have a control letter or letters on the reverse and a control symbol on the obverse. the sequence of letters follows closely the die recording system used on ptolemiac decadrachms struck in honor of arsinoe II after her death in 270. thus, the roman coins should date to just after the introduction of the egyptian coins, which were available to the romans (thomsen, 1957–61, vol. III: 127–36).

Metrology, or the study of the weight of the average coin, can help us understand which coins were prevalent when a coin was first minted. It appears that only the weights of gold coins were tightly controlled; silver coins, and certainly bronze coins, were made al marco, that is, the batch of coins was made with a predetermined amount of metal, but each coin could vary somewhat from the theoretical weight of an individual coin. the weights of roman bronze coins fell during the third century, especially during the Second punic War, as did the weights of silver coins, although the correlation between the bronze and silver coins is still being discussed. arguing from metrology quickly becomes extremely complex, as the numismatist tries to sort out the rate of the descent in weight, which is complicated by the restoration of weight standards which the romans attempted from time to time, and the attempt to parallel the weight of coins from neigh-boring cities. the denarius was first struck around 4.5 g, but sank to 3.85 g after c. 157, when we are told by ancient authors it was revalued. the first weight is close to the attic drachm of about 4.4 g, and about half the weight of the carthaginian shekel, which also fell in weight during the course of the war. Bronze coins are much harder to trace, in part due to the sporadic nature of their minting. the severest period of reduction was in the Second punic War. Yet even within issues, coins could come from the mint at full weight and as underweight (crawford, 1974: 595–6).

4 Coins and Coin Use

Numismatists have made some tentative progress in explaining coin use in different deposits in order to explain or even predict behavior and thus coin loss. Normally only small bronzes are used for burials (S. Stevens, 1991: 249) and for coins placed beneath the mast-steps of ships (carlson, 2007). Votive coins found in sanctuaries can be quite worn, or even counterfeits; precious-metal coins are rarely left as votives (Walker, 1988). I think we still need to examine if there are high percentages of “foreign” coins, or coins not minted in the city where they are placed, in votive deposits. army camps

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tend to have higher percentages of gold and silver coins among the unintentional losses than do cities (Kemmers, 2006).

counterfeit coins are a fascinating problem. counterfeits – often called imitations or plated coins – routinely appear as unintentional (or are they intentionally discarded?) coin losses in southern France, Spain, the Balkans, and even Italy. the ancients considered them a problem, as there was a penalty for producing counterfeit coins, which would argue that there were no officially sanctioned imitations as some have suggested. Serrate denarii, or denarii with notches around the edge, have been explained as one official reaction to the problem of counterfeiting. We are not entirely sure how these serrate coins were produced, but they did not solve the problem of counterfeiting, as we know from plated serrati (see Kraft et al., 2006). the first legislation about forging is the Lex cornelia de falsis, which had a provision against counterfeiting gold and silver coinage. counterfeiting bronze was probably also illegal, but at the time this law was passed, in 81, the roman government was not coining bronze. the use of control marks on denarii to ensure proper production of the coin, or even extra-mint practices such as the use of “banker’s marks,” or small symbols stamped onto the face of the coin to ascertain if the coin was plated, show the ancient concern about plated coins. Unlike countermarks, banker’s marks are not placed onto the coin to officially recognize a re-evaluation or reaffirm the currency, but are stamped or cut into the face of the coin by private users of the coin. Late in the empire there was a suggestion that all mintworkers should be confined to an island so they could not pass forgeries of the coins they were making in official workshops (fourth century; anon., De rebus bellicus 3.1–3). there was also legislation against stealing dies, which implies this was a circumstance that required the passing of such a law (Dig. 48.13.8). a sentence of exile was mandated for anyone housing counterfeit activities under his roof (Codex Theodosius 9.21.2). Some scholars have argued that republican denarii that were struck from official dies were illegally produced in the mint itself; alternatively, they were produced outside the mint by making casts (or even dies) from genuine coins (crawford, 1968).

after the Second punic War, the denarius became the dominant coin used in peninsular Italy; to a lesser extent roman bronze coins also replaced many local coinages. In Italy, the issuing of coin even became a mark of rebellion from the roman state, as during the Social War, when the coins were modeled on the roman denarii in terms of weight and iconography – and separated from them by the language used in the legends. Beyond Italy, denarii eventually replaced local silver coinages, especially the dominant silver units minted by Massalia (Marseilles). In the east, strong local coinages continued in their hellenistic patterns and numismatists have explored the relationship between roman control and local coinages in some issues, such as the large silver cistophori of asia Minor, the chalkoi of corinth, and the bronzes minted by herod the Great (crawford, 1985; crawford and Burnett, 1987; cf. callataÿ, 2011). the appearance of denarii and gold coins in ports in India have led to discussion on the shipping of coins, supply of the coins, trade in general, and the initial phases of that trade either in the second or first century (Berghaus, 1991; contra Gupta, 1991).

at the end of the republic, the generals moving with their armies changed coin production and coin use from Spain to North africa to asia Minor. Gold was minted by the triumvirs at a level not previously seen. Mark antony authorized vast numbers of dena-rii commemorating the legions serving with him in the east (the so-called “fleet coinage”),

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possibly with silver borrowed from cleopatra. these denarii were issued in conjunction with an entire series of bronze divisions; they continued to circulate for many years; and are often found in very worn condition. they were rarely hoarded, most likely because their silver content was lower than the average republican or early Imperial denarius. the bronzes soon dropped out of sight, since they were smaller than bronze coins from the mints associated with rome. But the coinage of this period shows that the mints outside of Italy were reacting to, if not conforming to, the coinages from rome, and as such are another tool to help us define the changes that are called romanization or acculturation, in both the east and the west (see e.g. Kroll, 1997).

5 Coins in Hoards

hoards have retained a special interest to numismatists, despite problems such as hoards appearing on the market with no provenance information (nor any certainty that the hoard is complete), or incomplete or insufficient publication of the coins in the hoard. Scholars debate how much a hoard can reveal about coins in circulation: hoards may contain carefully selected coins of finer quality or heavier weight, skewing the average qualities of the body of coins in circulation (see Lockyear, 2007). the ordering of hoards allows the numismatist to date coins that are minted in a series like the roman denarii; the work that was initially done here by crawford has been refined and extended in the light of a few important hoards, such as the Mesagne hoard (crawford, 1969; hersh and Walker, 1984). When a number of coins from different political systems circulate at the same time, hoards can help provide us with important clues about the relative chro-nologies of the issues, as well as the political and social ties between minting authorities. Some hoards show that coins remained in circulation for a long period of time, since they were available to the hoarder for placement in the hoard. and it is important to note that not all hoards are closed due to unrest, war or famine, but all are closed due to quite individual circumstances of loss. the 994 denarii found in an olla under a shop floor of Musarna (Viterbo) date between 211 and 67, although the bulk of them date to 120–80 (andreau et al., 2002: 160). No circumstance of war or famine can be attributed to  central Italy at this date; instead, the hoard was closed and never retrieved due to a particular personal predicament.

certain hoards that were closed due to war have provided dramatic testimony to the date of the introduction of the denarius. Numismatists who followed pliny’s (confused) account of the introduction of a silver coin in rome in 269 or 268 argued that pliny was  noting the introduction of the denarius (HN 33.45), but when Mattingly and robinson proposed a date of 187 for the introduction of the denarius, a storm arose that lasted until the early 1960s (Mattingly and robinson, 1933). It was then that thomsen (1957–61) finished his intricately argued volumes, comparing the denarius to other coins found on the peninsula by weight, style, iconography, epigraphy, placement in hoards and overstrikes, and, combining this information with the historical sources, proposing a date near 215 for the introduction of the denarius. Just as he was finishing his work, archaeologists found the destruction level of the city of Morgantina, captured by  the romans at the end of the Second punic War, in 211. the destruction layer had a terminus post quem due to a coin of hieronymous, minted in 215–214, and third- century coins

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found in the destruction level of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore. roman coins were found both in the destruction level and in hoards under the destruction level, which were hidden when the city was threatened. Most of these were early silver coinages, but there were some anonymous denarii mixed into the hoards. thus, the hoard evidence and the unintentional loss evidence pointed to a date for the introduction of the roman denarius just before the destruction of Morgantina in 211, in agreement with all of the other evidence that thomsen had marshaled. the date of the introduction of the denarius is now securely set at c. 212, no earlier than 215 (Buttrey, 1989).

6 Case Study: The Introduction of the Iberian Denarius

In order to bring many of these threads of numismatics and archaeology together, we can look at the problem of the introduction of the Iberian denarius, a problem that has been approached from many angles. the argument is between the “high” date, or early in the second century, and a “low” date of about the mid-second century (see e.g. Knapp, 1977b; García-Bellido, 1993; contra crawford, 1985: 84–102, 340–4). all of these arguments use the historical sources, metrology, iconography, overstrikes, hoards and evidence from archaeological strata, but the clinching evidence has yet to be brought forward (for a good introduction, see ripollès, 2005). Numismatists have to await evidence from an excavation and/or a retrieval of a hoard, as happened in Morgantina.

the first issues of silver coins from cities on the Iberian peninsula may be dated to slightly earlier than their counterparts in Latium, that is, to the mid-fifth and fourth century. the earliest Iberian coins are the silver fractions of emporium and rhode (see a map of Spain, Figure 33.1). Yet the bulk of the coinage used on the peninsula was minted in Massalia; coins minted in asia Minor and Magna Graecia were also in circulation, as can be seen in the unintentional losses in excavated strata. all of these coins tended to be found only in the area along the Mediterranean coast and in the north-east of the peninsula, the areas that had more towns and cities than the rural interior. Bronze coins were minted by c. 300 and this is when the small silver fractions were abandoned in favor of larger silver drachmas. the impetus for widespread coin use and minting came with the Barcid control of hispania; they probably began the exploitation of the silver resources. By the last decade of the third century no hispano-punic coins were made, and any that remained on the peninsula rapidly left circulation.

the silver coins minted under the Barcids were based on the carthaginian shekel (at 7.20 g), but during the course of the First punic War the coins were gradually reduced in weight to between 6.70 and 7.00 g. Bronzes were also minted, but after the war, they rose from 8–9 g to 11 g (at least some of which seem to date prior to the arrival of Scipio). Other smaller coins were minted by various cities during the war and these circulated with imitation drachmas, fractions attributed to ampurias, and imitation Massaliot obols. Only some of the coins are epigraphic and thus can be assigned to minting cities; the identifications of many of the minting cities of the anepigraphic coins are no more than educated guesses. coins arriving with the roman soldiers included silver victoriati and quadrati (minted by rome prior to the denarius), denarii, and some coins from Magna Graecia. In other words, in the third century, the Spanish peninsula

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looked much like the Italian peninsula, where individual cities minted bronze and silver coins and some of these issues were strongly influenced in terms of weight and iconog-raphy by the dominant political forces on the peninsula. these local issues circulated with coins from areas connected to the minting cities militarily or economically. In Spain, one can see the spheres of influence from the hoards and finds: carthaginian influence is felt in the south, along the Mediterranean coast, while the roman influence is felt in the Guadalquivir river Valley and the north-east of the peninsula (see chapter 33).

at the end of the war, the romans kept legions in hispania, using them to put down native revolts, especially in the interior. When cato’s tour of duty expired in 195 he declared that the province had been pacified; roman generals would again boast of  pacifying the province in 194 and 180. In each of these victories, Livy relates that the generals were voted triumphs at which they displayed enormous amounts of booty taken from the peninsula, mostly in silver coins which Livy describes as “argentum oscense” (Livy XXXIV.10.4 and 6–7, XXXIV.46.2, XL.43.5). this term has occasioned much discussion, with some suggesting that it refers to any of the silver coins circulating in the province. In the third century, these would have been primarily hispano-carthaginian coins featuring either very Greek-looking profiles or facing heads of herakles/Melqart, with punic inscriptions, and the drachmas of emporion and ampurias, which featured Greek-style heads of the nymph arethusa or artemis on the obverse and Greek legends. None of these coins were minted in the second century, or the period when Livy notes the silver coins taken as booty. In 179, tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, as praetor of hispania, ordered the town of certima to pay an indemnity of 24,000 nummi (Livy XL.47.2–10) – frustratingly, a word that does not give us clear evidence concerning the units in which the indemnity was paid (local coin, bullion, or denarii?). Soon after this, an embassy was sent to rome to complain about roman magistrates who were raising taxes in currency, again with no specification of the means of payment (Livy XLIII.2.12).

Since the historical accounts are problematic, archaeologists have proposed a date based on the stratigraphy of the camps used by the roman legions during campaigns around Numantia (see Figure 14.4; chapter 14). these are the only sites yet found that can be dated by marker artifacts within the early to mid-second century; they have bronze local issues and foreign coins that can be linked to the Iberian denarii in con-texts that are known from historical circumstances. Included in the finds from the camps are bronzes from the hispanic mints of Sesars and Sekaisa. the former minted bronzes with a diademed male head (sometimes bearded) on the obverse and a rider on a horse on the reverse, with a legend in Iberian. It is thought that these bronze coins were issued simultaneously with Iberian denarii with identical obverses and reverses, although it should be noted that no denarii were found in the camps. Bronzes of Kesse-tarraco were also found in the camps, especially renieblas camp III; Kesse-tarraco also produced denarii, as we know from the stylistic similarity of the diademed male head on the obverses on both the bronze and silver coins. excavation of the camps at renieblas was  conducted by a. Schulten (1929) between 1909 and 1912, when he discovered five  superimposed roman legionary camps. the excavator dated these camps by a reconstruction of the history of the region, not by using the material remains or marker artifacts. his proposal that two of the camps belong to the same year is especially controversial; Schulten thought one level belonged to the summer camp, and

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120 Jane DeRose Evans

another to stone construction for a winter camp in the same year. a study of the coins from the camps also remains controversial for its conclusions. these conclusions about the dates of the coins were argued by the numismatist hildebrandt, using the wear of the coins and the weight of the bronze issues, which he maintained fell in tandem with the weight of the roman bronzes (hildebrandt, 1979). the real problem is the topmost camp, camp V, which Schulten associated with Scipio’s siege of Numantia in 133/2. Nine roman coins were associated with this camp, along with seven bronze coins minted in Spain. the roman coins were dated between 211 and 146, and six of the seven native coins were thought to be minted between 145 and 130. One roman bronze coin in the same layer, an uncia, is now thought to have been minted in 108 or 107, though in Schulten’s time the coin was thought to have been made at the beginning of the first century. hildebrandt suggested that this was a residual coin from the higher level and suggested that camp V should date to immediately after the siege of Scipio, due to the weight of and wear on the bronze coins. Interestingly, Schulten dated this very same layer to a camp built in 75/4, or the end of the Sertorian War, using the historical sources only. hildebrandt’s date is thus based on his suggestion concerning the residual nature of the late coin. Using the same coins but different arguments about metrology and residuality, other scholars suggest that the 108/107 date is a real termi-nus post quem (Dobson and Morales, 2008). thus, the archaeological evidence remains problematic.

hoards unfortunately give us little to go on. roman and Iberian denarii only appear together in hoards in the last third of the second century, after both the “high” and the “low” date of the introduction of the Iberian denarius. and away from the coasts, only hoards of bronze coins from the late third and first half of the second century have survived, though these can include both roman and Iberian coins. Numismatists have carefully considered the wear on the roman and the Iberian coins to try and give them a relative order, but this reasoning has not won full acceptance in terms of dating the Iberian denarius.

and so, numismatists have suggested other ways of thinking about the introduction of the Iberian denarius: the denarii were created in order to make the indemnity pay-ments to rome by 195, and thus mimic roman weight standards. Or they were created strictly for commercial purposes within the Spanish peninsula, and can be explained by their being modeled on the dominant commercial coin of the second century. We do not know if they were created as exchange items used to cement alliances among the tribes, or even used as a profit-making device by the larger Iberian towns, which minted for their smaller neighbors. the coins may have been created to fund the insurgency against rome, or the fact that the cities which emit denarii come from roman-controlled areas implies that they were not used as a tool of resistance to roman rule. they may have been created in order to pay roman taxes, or the romans may have supplied denarii to the Iberian peninsula in order for the locals to pay taxes to rome. If the latter, the creation of the Iberian denarius would be unrelated to the need to pay in specie. But taxes may have been largely paid in kind. the coins may have been used to pay roman legions in Spain (and the roman soldiers had them remade when they returned to Italy), or they may have been used to pay auxiliaries in Spain. We do not even know if the roman soldier was paid in coin shipped from Italy or if he was paid in bronze or silver.

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Coins and the Archaeology of the Roman Republic 121

7 Conclusion

the case study has shown how important it is for archaeologists to work closely with numismatists on interpreting the excavation coins. the first thing the numismatist should do is work with the archaeologist to systematize the recording of the coins in situ, and to establish a careful method of conservation and preservation of the coins. Using this recording system, the numismatist, working closely with the pottery specialist, can help determine the nature of the deposit and decide if the coins are intentionally placed on the site or unintentionally lost. Only when these parameters are understood can the numismatist begin to help with the terminus post quem of the deposition of the stratum. It is expected that at the same time, the numismatist will pay attention to issues such as metrology, iconography, the use of the coin in the particular circumstance, and the overall picture of coin loss on the site and in the region. the result should be a final publication that is more than a simple list of the coins found in the excavation, but an interpretation of why the coins were found and what those coins can tell us about the site. close collaboration between the archaeologist and the numismatist can uncover aspects of the ancient world that scholars of the ancient economy, ancient history, and even ancient language can share.

the coins of the republican period still need a great deal of study, as can be seen by the case study of the Iberian denarius. the third century is a particularly contentious period, even if the picture begins to be sorted out at the end of the century with the introduction of the denarius. the numismatist must work closely with the archaeologist in order to interpret the evidence of the coins, using all of the tools available to her – from metrology to hoard evidence, iconography to prosopographical information, evidence from archae-ological strata to the few references we have from ancient sources. Only by viewing this evidence holistically can we see how the romans developed their monetary system, and eventually knit into it all of the provinces of the western republican empire, and much later extending that impact to the eastern provinces of the Imperial world.

Acknowledgments

I extend my thanks to L. houghtalin and the late J. MacIsaac, who read this chapter and gave me good suggestions for improvement.

FURTHER READIng

there is no good handbook that discusses republican coins and archaeology, and one older handbook, Coins and the Archaeologist by J. casey and r. reece (2nd rev. edn, 1988), is very largely concerned with roman Britain and the Imperial period. Sheedy and papageorgiadou-Banis (1997) is rather limited in terms of the theoretical issues addressed, and it concerns only athens and corinth. One can get an overview of archaeological thought in regards to coins in Noeske (1998) and in less detail in MacIsaac (1995). reece (1996) (writing about Imperial sites) must be used carefully, as, for instance, reece is sanguine that corrosion and retrieval methods cannot seriously disturb the overall picture of coin loss and excavation coins.

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the important coin catalog for roman republican issues is crawford’s 1974 volumes, and his arguments on all aspects of republican coinage must be taken seriously. his 1985 volume is a fundamental and important study of coins from Spain to Syria, from the fifth century until augustus’s reign. thomsen’s three volumes (1957–61) are still valuable for their exploration of monetary issues in the peninsula in the republican period. the collected papers from a conference, edited by crawford and Burnett (1987), provide insight into the coinages that were in use when the roman denarius system arrived and dominated the expanding republican empire, from Germany to Spain, North africa to asia Minor and Greece. It should be used in conjunction with Burnett (1982), and amandry, Burnett and ripolles (1992), for local issues at the end of the republic.

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