A punchmark esthetic?

This is a screenshot of some coins from Velia in the Oppido Lucano hoard (most famous for having a specimen of RRC 13/1 in it).

It is from Francesco Panvini Rosati’s “Il ripostiglio monetale rinvenuto a Oppido Lucano” (on file in his collected works PDF)

My eye stuck on those incuse squares behind the head of Athena. They look so much like counter marks, but they are not! Here’s the catalogue entry. This is HN 1318.

This space behind the neck of Athena but inside the curve of the plume of the helmet is just where Velia places secondary symbols. Presumably correlated to the issuer or issuing of the coins.

Here’s an image of a Paris specimen to let you see the incuse better:

Velia did in the early days of its coin issue strike series with incuse punch reverses, but that doesn’t seem to be the inspiration for this unusual secondary symbol.

The shear complexity of the Velia issues and their symbols have kept numismatists happily and busily obsessed over the years. Rutter in Historia Numorum Italy is usually v v terse, but he lets Velia stretch to 6 pages resorting to a chart at one point.

One more just for fun. This is HN 1308.