28 April 2012

Hoard of Celtic coins found in Switzerland


Details from The History Blog:
A hoard of almost 300 silver Celtic coins has been unearthed in the village of Füllinsdorf, near Basel in northwest Switzerland. They were found by a private individual who was working as a scout for the canton archaeological department. He recovered a number of coins that were just barely buried in a few centimeters of soil, and then he alerted the official archaeologist. They found the 293 silver coins spread over an area of about 538 square feet, all of them just under the surface. It’s by far the largest number of Celtic coins ever found in Switzerland...

The coins are of a type known as a quinarius, a small silver piece worth half of a denarius. When Rome first issued the denomination in 211 B.C., it was called a quinarius because it was worth five asses (the equivalent of 5 pounds in brass coin). When they were reissued in 101 B.C., they were still worth half a denarius, but monetary reform made the denarius worth 16 asses so the quinarii were now worth eight...

Roman quinarii had a helmeted figure of Pallas, later Victory, on the obverse, and the Dioscuri (divine twins Castor and Pollux) on horseback on the reverse. The Celtic version also has a helmeted victory on the obverse, but done in Celtic style and a single Celtic horse on the reverse.

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