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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.
Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...
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Two jugs, 38kg and 50kg of coins! Holy shit, that's thousands of them. So jelly. Nice that they were found by actual archeologists. Hopefully we'll see the results in musea soon.
Even the silver alone is valuable. 88kg * 1600 euros per kg = 140 000 euros.
ex nummis
...were you hidden in one of those, too?
Probably a lot of dirt mixed in with that.
I want to believe they took that into account, before saying it's 38+50kg of coins, but fair point.
Just want to say the English plural of museum is museums ๐ If you wanted to use the Latin plural for some reason, notice that you would need locative plural, not nominative! Best just keep to English eh
I like it better when they are called hordes.
The article said it was more likely "long term savings" but doesn't say how much money it represents in relative terms, just an estimate of the number of coins. So it's not clear if this is capitalistic wealth hoarding or an average person's retirement fund.
Well it was 1800 years ago so I'm pretty sure capitalism has nothing to do with it at all. But that's just what we used to call finds like these in archeology. Coin hordes. These kind of finds usually correlate pretty strongly with times of strife
Damn, yet another generation that could afford to save...
Should have put them in stocks instead. Didn't anyone tell the Romans about inflation? Those coins are basically worthless now smh
They belonged to Euclio. He fiercely hid his pots of gold, because he was an old miser who feared thieves. So, his daughter got pregnant? WHO CARES, THE GOLD MATTERS MORE! ...no, wait, that was in Athens, not in Gallia. (Not even. It's from a comedy.)
The first hoard held an estimated 83 pounds (38 kilograms) of coins, which "corresponds to approximately 23,000 to 24,000 coins,"
38kg/24k coins โ 1.5g/coin. If this was from Rome they'd be most likely quinarii and/or denarii*, but I'm not sure if the Gallic Empire issued the same or equivalent coins. Either way, they're silver, based on colour; bronze or copper would be greener by now.
This reinforces the hypothesis it's some sort of piggy-bank. A rich person trying to hide their stash in times of insecurity would do it with solidi (gold) instead, as it's better for long-term storage. Those amphorae probably belonged to someone who worked hard to get some money, dropping a coin or two each time. Because, you know... you'll get old, your work won't give you as many fruits as before, but you still gotta eat.
The fact the amphorae were found hints the person passed away before they could reach old age. Or that they were really, really good at storing money. Either way, I hope someone spared two of those for their eyes, to pay Charon's ride.
*if this was some decades before I'd guess antoniniani too, but by 280~310 those were mostly bronze too.
