hoard evidence – Liv Mariah Yarrow

So I was reading Pere Pau Ripollès’ fascinating ‘The X4 Hoard (Spain): Unveiling the Presence of Greek Coinages during the Second Punic War’ (2008) this morning. I fervently wish I’d read it before now. The problem with real publication, rather than this blogging non-sense, is its not easy after the fact to rethink and amend and correct your former ideas. Also real publication takes a very long time, so by the time it is out there for the world one’s intellectual engagement with the content has already moved on to something else or ‘evolved’ as Mr. Obama’s position has done on some issues. I’m thinking about my piece in this book. I’ll put a clean copy up on academia.edu one of these days.

Anyway. Pere Pau Ripollès goes along way towards illuminating circulation of Greek coinage in the Western Mediterranean. He tentatively still supports Crawford’s 1985 thesis that any Greek coins arrived with the Romans, although saying ‘this may be too categorical’. I’m inclined to see the evidence he collects as requiring this hypothesis to be seriously re evaluated. As he himself says in his conclusion the Greek coinage found in the hoards of Sicily are more similar to those in Spain than either is to Italy where there is a greater dearth of such Eastern coinages in the hoards.

One of the coins in Hoard X4 that he publishes is of the same type as that illustrated above.

This coin type, Crawford suggests, is the inspiration for the prows on Roman bronze series (See RRC p. 42 esp. n. 5; earlier post). It’s nice then to see that some specimens did in fact reach the Western Mediterranean relatively swiftly after its production.

I also note the rendering of the ram on this type (red circle above) is not unlike that found on the Athlit Ram.

And, while were talking about things I said in print I no longer believe, I can’t stand by a 260s date for the Heracles and Wolf and Twins didrachm after all the reading I’ve done for this new book. It fits better at the end of the First Punic War. I’m not sure how much that messes with my use of it as comparative evidence in the chapter linked above, but it does have some impact…

ANS specimens of RRC 21/7 = HN Italy 294. Click image for full details.

Last time I was worrying about acorns, I was mostly on about RRC 14/7. This is the other ‘heavy’ acorn. Many of the specimens on the market do seem ‘heavy’ for being a 1/24th piece of a 265g as, or at least a quick scan suggests, but the ANS specimens are lighter: 11.75-13.9g. They are not so heavy that they seem particularly problematic in the weight standard, cf. the ANS uncia specimens of the series which are all much heavier.

My interest was peaked by how they show up in this hoard:

Image links to source publication. Marks in red are my annotations. [*Note:* the correct citation for the Nola bronze is HN Italy 607. Also see below for discrepancy between this report of the hoard and that in IGCH.]

So here RRC 21/7 is hanging out all by its lonesome with a bunch of RRC 14s and 18s. I’m not really sure why RRC 21/7 couldn’t go with the RRC 18 series. The types of RRC 21 echo the obverse types of RRC 14, so that would make the acorn fit with RRC 21. Must take a look to see if we have any other hoards with RRC 21/7 out in the cold…

I’m also sure I’m being influenced by how RRC 14s and 18s are often found in hoards together on their own; another great publication surveying this phenomenon is online.

Here’s Burnett 1977 on the importance of the above hoard:

Capture — Image links to online version of the publication.

If the statement about the semuncia being contemporary with the Roma/Victory didrachms is true this would pull this hoard’s date down to the end of 1st Punic War based on Burnett’s 2006 reading of the San Martino in Pentilis hoard. The presence of the Minerva/Cock types and the Aesernia types with the subsequent Man-faced bull issues leads me to think this is a hoard from a transitional phase between the two. I’d be inclined to agree with M. C. Molinari that it predates both the Pratica di Mare and Teano Hoards…

Okay, here’s one more complication. R. Russo in Numismatica Sottovoce proposed that RRC 16, 17, and 23 were single series (23 = double unit, 16 = unit, 17 = half unit) minted at Neapolis after the Battle of Beneventum. This seems too early to me and I hesitate to break RRC 23 away from it Messane mint connection. But neither of these points directly challenge them being a series.

But if RRC 16 was really contemporary with RRC 17 that would detract from M. C. Molinari’s ordering of these three hoards as RRC 16 is present in Pietrabbondante… I find myself leaning more away from Russo’s idea of a series.

Mattingly’s reading of the Pietrabbondante hoard is here but I think it’s mostly out of date given the evidence of the San Martino in Pentilis evidence.

Something seems to have gone wrong in the transcription of the hoard totals in the above publication. Here’s the entry from IGCH:

Note that the number of uncertain have been attributed to Neapolis above and the 126 of Neapolis have been missed out. I don’ t think it overly affects the interpretation of the hoard in source publication. The original publication of the hoard with all the details has been digitized, although it takes forever to load.

Tag: hoard evidence

311 out of 410 days: Greek Coins in the West

297 out of 410 days: Acorns again.