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

I. INTRODUCTION Extensive research collecting data and material preceded the composing of the currency of Brigetio. The size of the material and the selection for usefulness caused a great many problems. The following source material was used preparing this paper: Xantus János Museum of G/Őr; the coins of Szőny, found in the Kuny Domonkos Museum of Tata; the excavation and scattered coins of the Numismatic and Archaeological Departments of the Hungarian National Museum, including the coins of the Tussla collection, and the coins of László Torday, furthermore the coins from Brigetio, originally of Ödön Kállay, the city clerk of Szőnyi, presently owned by György Lenhardt. Other published coins of Szőny were also used for this paper. This part of the material may not be complete, but the most important literature where coins of Szőny are mentioned have been thoroughly scanned. After careful selection through the above mentioned source material, only those coins were listed in the catalogue, where at least the emperor's name could be identified. Even these were treated individually. Especially the wrong identification of the material of the fourth century A.D., and the lack of mint marks caused problems, concerning the coins of Constantine the Great, his sons, furthermore the coins of Valentinian and Valens. As to the late Roman material we took into consideration that at least the 2 reverse type, or the mint mark, or mint place should be identifiable. This was necessary because the listed collections, except the Lenhardt-Káiiay, the Tussla and the Torday material^ consist of two parts, a tangible real material and a theoretically existing coinage.^ This applies to the material gathered from the literature as well. We can render the following explanation. For example only two antoniniani are mentioned from Regalianus and one from Dryantilla. (6o/922-924). Ail three coins are well referred to through a hundred years of literature, but the whereabouts of these coins are unknown since they were auctioned off and the owners were not known.^ These are the coins we previously called "theoretically existing". Many coins, published in the literature, could be identified with the coins in the different collections, like in the case of the gold medailons (135/8/9). but the denarii found with the medailons are only known from the literature (13 5/6-7, )(l3 6/io15). Unfortunately this is a recurring case. Most coin collections of the country museums either perished or became mixed up during the Second World War. When the coins were recatalogued during the nineteen fifties, identification with the old catalogues was impossible beause of the inaccurate identifications. Thus the sites of coins do not appear in the new catalogues. The old catalogues bear sites, but no coins can be attached to them. This occurs in the coin collection of the Hungarian National Museum as well. According to the old method, the coins arriving to the museum, including the ones with known or definite sites were catalogued only if they were not dupkicates. If they proved to be duplicates, like most likely the denarii of the medailon find (Find. No. V), they were placed among the duplicates, thus they were no longer identifiable. 3