BÍRÓ-SEY KATALIN: COINS FROM IDENTIFIED SITES OF BRIGETIO AND THE QUESTION OF LOCAL CURRENCY / Régészeti Füzetek II/18. (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Budapest, 1977)
I. INTRODUCTION
There are no impressions of Viminacium among the coins of Valerian (58/796-8ol) and 5 4 Gallienus ( 58 /8o2-92l) , during the early years of 25o A. D. the number of coins decreases . It seems that the Roxolans, press^g from the south, ruined the whole of the Panonnian limes between 259 and 26o A. D. There are many coin hoards closing with 258-26o A. D. from the whole province. The most northern line of these finds are drawn between Budaujlak, Mérges, Apetlon, Carnuntum, Berndorf, and Tuila. But there is no hoard from Brigetio from this critical period. The excavations do not show any devastation of the camp for this period, only for the Tetrarchy. 5 7 The end of the 25os marks the beginning of the great inflation. During this time the most frequent coin is the antoninianu s , with 7o-8o% official silver content in 25o A. D. , but from 26o A. D. on, this is only 5% 5 8. Practically many coin types disappeared, like the different bronze coins, which were though substituted by the antoniniani of bronze. There is another event influencing the currency of the area, the counter - caesarship of Regalianus and Ingenuus. There are three restruck antoniniani among the scattered coins of Regalianus and D ryantilla (6o/922-924). The closeness of Carnuntum explains the relatively high number of these very rare impressions. The excavations barely provide any material for the following decades. It seems that the camp and the settlement lives on, but between much narrower limits than during the first half of the century. ^ The currency is represented by inflationary antoniniani of Claudius II Gothicus ( 6o /925-Ioo3), Victorinus ( 6i /loo4), Quintillus ( 6l /loo5-loo7), Tetricus I ( 61 /loo8-Iol2), Aurelian ( 62 /lol3-lo58), Tacitus ( 63 /lo6o-lo65), Florianus ( 63 /I066-I068), Probus ( 63 /lo69-IIl6) , Carus ( 64 /m7-Il2o) , Carinus ( 64 /ll2l-ll29), and Numerian ( 64/ll3o-H3l). Looking at the graph, the years 26o to 28o A. D. show a relative increase, but an absolute decrease because of the decrease in the silver content of the antoniniani, which cannot be precisely determined. 8 0 The stabilizing attempts of Aurelian were very short lived. The number of coins for this period is very low. The mutual coin of Aurelian and Vabalathus is the only Alexandrian billon impression ( 62 /lo59). p There is an interesting phenomenon next to the io, 000 litre container, where a sarcophagus of secondary usage has been found (II 6 /ilo-128). They found some coins almost in mint condition of Aurelian (ll6/lll-l24) and Severina ( U 8/l25-l28) along with some 2d and beginning of 3rd century coins in the no. 9 grave 8 8 (Fig. 122-124). A similar case is reported in the Archaeologiai Ertesitő, that a stone sarcophagus was found and "next to the skeleton there were some 42 pieces of Aurelian type coins". 8 8 Unfortunately we were not able to to find out the precise location of this grave. Although grave finds do not lend themselves for investigating currency, but even the scattered coins show an outstanding value for the impressions of Aurelian. During the end of the 280s and the beginning of the 290s A. D. the amount of money decreases seriously, the number of yearly average stays under 1. 12
