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

94 • The earliest coin of grave 9 of the grave group next to the lo, ooo litre containe

r is of Faustina senior. Beside this there were coins of Trebonianus Gallus, Gaiiienus, Claudius II, numerous coins in mint condition of Aurelian and Severine', in this grave (ll6/lIo-l28). The latest coin of this grave group is a follis of Constantine the Great, struck in Nikomedia (116 /lo9) from grave 8. 95 The earliest coin of the Járóka cemeter

y comes from grave 18. It is a Domitian bronze without further identification possibility (ll6 /l34). The latest is a Philip I bronze (118/154) from grave 74. The cemetery contains coins mainly of the 2nd century A. D. But the centenionalis of Constans from grave 65 completely breaks the chronological unity of the cemetery. (?) The earliest coins of the skeleton graves of Sörházkert cemeter

y came from grave 65, denarii of Vespasian (119 /177-179), but there is also an Antonius triumvir denarius also ( 119/176) which can be treated as the coins of Marcus Aurelius in hoards closing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A. D. The latest coin is a sestertius of Alexander Severus (l2o/ 199) of grave 2o6. From the cremation graves an a

s of Claudius, of grave 124 (l2l/2l5) is the earliest, and a coin from Viminacium of Gordian III is the latest, from grave 73. 97 There were only two graves of the Polgárváros (Civilian city) cemetery I

, which contained coins of Trajan (122 /236-23 7) but could not be identified closer. 98 Only a few graves of Polgárváros cemetery I

I contained Trajan and Marcus Aurelius coins ( 122

/238-243). There graves of Polgárváros cemetry II

I constained coins. Even these were early, the coins of Domitian, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius (i2

2 /244246) which could be identified closer. The exceptional amount of Aurelian coins, considering the coins of Aurelian and Severina from grave 9 of the lo.ooo litre container group, and the report of the Arch. Ert. (graves 247-289, Note) about the "42 Aurelian type coins" from a sarcophagus, must be in connection with the outstanding number of scattered coins from Aurelian times. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE CURRENCY OF BRIGETIO, AQUINCUM AND INT ERC ISA (Fig. XV) The currency of three Pannonian settlements were written up in treatises by now, that of Carnuntum, Aquincum, and Intercisa. The inadequacy of the first two is, that of the coins treated, they both only give a listing by emperors and by coin types. Since Elmer used not only the scattered coins but also the hoards in his treatise of the currency of Carnuntum, he worked with 12, ooo coins. We did not include Carnuntum on our graph comparing the currency of settlements, because of the merging of scattered coins and hoards. The graph of the currency of Aquincum was established by Pekáry in such a way, that it showed the yearly average. He divided the number of coins struck under one emperor by the number of ruling years of the emperor. Thus in order to compare the currency of Brigetio and Intercisa with the currency of Aquincum, we had to prepare the graph of the first two accordingly. Were we not bound by the system used for Aquincum, with the aid of identifications, we could have arrived to a more precise yearly average. The graph shows only the number of coins and not the types. We used 471 coins from Intercisa, 1458 from Aquincum and 2291 from Brigetio. Concerning gold coins, Intercisa takes the first place, where o,63% of the scattered coins are gold, whereas o, 27% of the scattered coins of Aquincum were gold. Brigetio has the worst ratio, with a o, o4%. Io

2 But there are three gold hoards known from Brigetio. This gold abundancy, of course, is not reflected in the scattered material. 19