Of 1366 Cast Coins found at Vicarello:
The chart just visualizes what you already know. If you’re going to make a coin offering you’re most likely to leave a little coin. However, as my joking chart title suggests, this habit could clearly have been a drain on Roman small change supplies.
Does the lower count of semisses and quadrantes as compared to asses and trientes, suggest there were fewer of these denominations in people’s purses? likewise fewer circulating semunciae than uncia?
We might then also deduce a similar reflection of availability of struck bronzes: semisses slightly less common than asses, quadrans less common than triens, uncia less common than sextans. However, all told struck coinage of all denominations looks like it mightbe more readily available in this latter period.
ROMANO Struck Bronzes
By far and away the most common find is RRC 16: 1156 specimens! followed closely by RRC 17 of which 916 were found!
That’s a LOT of small change AND suggests that both struck and cast were used by peoples heavily in the same cultural environment. Roughly speaking a little over 25% of the bronze coin finds are cast, a little under 75% struck and the pattern suggests heavy use of the site in the mid 3rd century by Romans. About 30% of the struck bronze is of the prow series which suggests continuity of practice at the site through late 3rd century at least. I am particularly intrigued by the presence of Teanum, Suessa, and Cales bronzes of the early part of the First Punic War.
Public Domain: Henzen, W. “Alterthümer Von Vicarello.” Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie 9 (1854): 20-36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41251528.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 