About the project
The Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire Project is a joint initiative of the Ashmolean Museum and the Oxford Roman Economy Project. It is the brainchild of Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza and is funded by the Augustus Foundation since 2013. Directors of the project are Professor Chris Howgego and Professor Andrew Wilson.
The project intends to fill a major lacuna in the digital coverage of coin hoards from antiquity. It aims to collect information about hoards of all coinages in use in the Roman Empire between approximately 30 BC and AD 400. Imperial Coinage forms the main focus of the project, but Iron Age and Roman Provincial coinages in circulation within this period are also included to give a complete picture of the monetary systems of both the West and the East. In 2019 the scope of the project was extended to include hoards of Roman coins from outside the Empire. The intention of the project is to provide the foundations for a systematic Empire-wide study of hoarding and to promote the integration of numismatic data into broader research on the Roman Economy.
The first phase of the project (2013-18) focussed on collecting summary hoard data from all Roman provinces, as well as inputting a selection of hoards at the level of the individual coin. The current second phase (2019-23) aims to complete geographical coverage and to undertake the daunting task of systematically recording hoards at the level of the coin (including RIC numbers and full descriptions), where such data are available.
A large dataset!
As of today, we have collected information on nearly 15,000 hoards both from within and outside the Roman Empire, amounting to more than 5 million individual coins and over 4000 bibliographical references:
Fig. 2: All validated data for hoards closing between 27 BC and AD 476. Imperium map tiles © https://dh.gu.se/dare/
International collaborations
Our work would not be possible without a network of international collaborations, involving people, institutions and projects in 25 countries, see here for a list of our external partners.
A recent addition to our database is the Gützkow hoard (Germany) consisting of five late Roman gold coins (5th c. AD), found stacked on top of each other and placed inside a solid gold wire together with a golden pendant. This ensemble was published by our German colleagues who sent us their data so that this find could be presented in a larger international context.
The largest hoard of our dataset: Reka Devnia with more than 100,000 silver coins
The Reka Devnia hoard was found on the 10th of November 1929 on the site of ancient Marcianopolis, located in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior in today’s Bulgaria. The hoard was found by a resident of the village of Reka Devnia, in his yard. A first jar was found, soon followed by a second one. Local authorities were alerted, first the mayor, then the prefect in Varna. Before the authorities could get hold of all the content of the hoard, some of it was dispersed among the local population, and then sold to collectors who apparently came even from abroad.
Figures relating to the coins collected by the authorities and subsequently transferred to the museums in Sofia and Varna are relatively precise, in terms of weight and number of specimens: 286 kg, totalling 81,044 coins. The percentage of lost coins is rather more difficult to estimate, as quite different figures were given at different times. In any case, the hoard certainly totalled over 100,000 coins.
Even if part of the hoard was lost, we are incredibly lucky that the content of the hoard that went to the museums in Sofia and Varna was subsequently catalogued and published by the Bulgarian numismatist N. A. Mouchmov in 1934.
Chronologically, the hoard covers the period between Mark Antony (in the first century BC) and Trajan Decius in the middle of the 3rd century AD (with a terminus post quem of AD 251).
All of the coins are silver coins, mostly denarii (80,188 specimens), with only 821 antoniniani, and a very small minority of provincial silver issues (Lycian drachms, drachms from Caesarea in Cappadocia, Amisus, Arabia and Edessa: 58 specimens).