A gold coin from Jastrzębniki, Kalisz district (PL). On the late Celtic coinage in north-central Europe

Abstract

Abstract Attempts were made in several locations in Central Europe to continue minting in gold, following the Celtic Boii tradition which began to fade after the collapse of the Bohemian-Moravian oppida at the turn of the LTD1/D2 phases (ca. 60/50 BC). The main center for the continuation of this activity was in the lands of the Pannonian Boii, in the Bratislava area, and probably in the Bratislava oppidum itself. This paper focuses on three other minting centers which were established north of the Carpathians and Sudetes among the northern barbarians and which imitated late Boii gold coins: one in the Tyniec group near Kraków, and two in the main Przeworsk culture settlement zones on the middle Prosna River near Kalisz and in Kuyavia. These northern mints, undoubtedly operated by experienced Celtic minters, recycled extremely popular shell staters with solar and lunar motifs that were reintroduced into circulation with a renewed stamp or after having been legalized by adding small additional marks. They also issued various small coins made of electrum alloys, significantly varying in weight (mostly about 1/8 of a Boii stater), with an abstract knob-and-rib ornamentation reminiscent of the motifs featuring on the youngest coins minted at the oppidums in Staré Hradisko (Moravia) and Bratislava. The nominally gold coins issued in the Oder and Vistula basins must have provided the equivalent in supra-regional prestige exchange, which is indicated by their extensive circulation zone. One of the reasons for the disappearance of the local minting traditions among the northern barbarian elites might have been the massive influx of Roman coinage into the Central European Barbaricum in the second century AD.