A Bar of a Different Shape

RRC 3/1a and b

This is the first “Roman” Currency bar in Crawford’s sequence. There is no known whole bar. “B” is in Berlin according to Crawford in RRC and comes from the Ariccia 1848 Hoard according to Haeberlin, BUT but in CHRR Crawford says all bars except one shield from the Ariccia Hoard are in Rome…

“A” is from the S. Marinella 1927 Hoard. This image comes from Catalli’s 1989 re publication of the hoard (need a copy? Happy to send you a hi res pdf).

What makes RRC 3/1 different is it’s dimensions. It is far closer in proportion to the so called Tarquinia Bars than any of the other Roman ones. This is obvious by a quick glance at Haeberlin’s plate

Here’s a side by side to give you a sense of HOW DIFFERENT RRC 3/1 is from the other Roman Currency Bars

Snapshots taken from the hoard display in Rome show how massive the bevels are on the edge of the piece.

The other Roman currency bars are much flatter and wider and taller.

It has been accepted by Crawford and the Zagreb cataloguers that the Mazin Hoard contained a specimen of RRC 3/1b, i.e. the subtype without inscription:

I find myself agnostic about whether we should ascribe this bar fragment to Rome. Obviously the hoard contained other fragments of other Roman bars as well, but this looks like other ramo secco…

I wonder if the Berlin specimen could be metallurgically tested… Would it look like Roman material? The Tarquinian material? or the Ramo Secco? Each has a distinctive metallurgical profile.

All of this reminds me of:

Potts, C. (2019). Made in Etruria: Recontextualizing the Ramo Secco. American Journal of Numismatics (1989-), 31, 1–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27095026

Who argues that the symbol on the ramo secco is a LIVING plant. Most certainly on the S. Marinella Hoard specimen I see livng leaves on the stem…

No. 3 on Plate 35 of Garrucci 1885 clearly matches the photo of the Ariccia specimen in Haeberlin, he says it is in Kircheriano in his own day so that highly suggests it is now in the Rome, and not Berlin, and I won’t get to test it any time soon. The plate is also a nice illustration of similarities to Tarquinian specimens.