In the original 1969 publication of CHRR Crawford says “There is no good reason for regarding this hoard as a votive deposit.”
In 2003 re revised his views, but still did not commit himself to believing it was a votive deposit:
This question is of some interest to me as I’d be curious if it meant all these objects were actually in circulation together or had a long period of sequential deposit. But the main issue is that I failed to include this in my #NotAllElephants article from 2021 (formatted full text). It doesn’t change my argument in the slightest but it makes my maps and tables incomplete and that bugs the heck out of me!
The hoard contained 6 fragments of Roman currency bars (so called aes signatum):
RRC 7/1, RRC 10/1, RRC 12/1, RRC 11/1, RRC 5/1, RRC 4/1
Not illustrated:
“Another roughly triangular fragment, with an undulating fracture line that runs along two of the three sides of the piece; which presents in relief on the two wide faces a wavy line in relief which could also be or rather hint at one of the stylized floral ornaments of the lightning clasped in the claws of the eagle, of the quadrilateral EAGLE-PEGASUS (3) while, on the other face nothing can be identified. Weight gr. 72; cm. 4 X 2.6o X 1.30 thick.”
“An almost shapeless triangular fragment where it is difficult but certainly possible to recognize traces of the feet of the bull appearing on the two sides of the relative BULL-BULL quadrilateral (2). Weight gr. 58; cm. 3.6o x 2.50 x 1.10 thick.” (Machine translations)
Cesano not only talks about the coins but also gives weight details for the Aes Rude that make up the largest category in the deposit:
One weird thing is the gap in this find between currency bars and the next Roman coinage which starts with the prow series libral standard aes grave. Was there a gap in deposition during this time?
I wanted to think about weights of the aes rude as a counter point for the currency bar fragments so I made some charts:
However, we shouldn’t just think about weight but also size, as Cesano says:
“The pieces are of two types, compact and heavy bronze and lighter spongy slag, whereby the weight is not indicated by the volume of the pieces themselves.” {machine translation}
The images and above quotes are from Cesano 1942 with a lovely colleague just sent me.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 