COINAGE OF IRON AGE EUROPE

Coinage was an invention of the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor in the seventh century b.c. Over the next three centuries, the concept spread through the rest of the Mediterranean world, including the Greek colonies of southern France and northeastern Spain, such as Emporion (Ampurias) and Massalia (Marseille), although it was not until c. 300 b.c. that the Romans adopted a regular coinage. At about this time the idea also began to penetrate northward into barbarian Europe. By the second century b.c. some form of coinage was in use over much of the Continent, from the Black Sea and the Danube basin to the Atlantic coast of France and Spain and as far north as Bohemia and central Germany. The inhabitants of southeastern Britain were among the last to adopt coinage and continued to produce it in the first century a.d., after the other coin-using regions had been absorbed into the Roman Empire. Most of the barbarian groups who adopted coinage were Celtic speaking but also included Germans, Iberians, Illyrians, Ligurians, and Thracians.

At the outset Iron Age coinage was either of gold or of silver and derived from Greek models. Precious metal issues in the name of the powerful Macedonian rulers of the late fourth century b.c., Philip II and his son Alexander the Great, were by far the most influential prototypes, but the coins of various Greek colonies also were imitated. Over time distinctive local and regional coinage traditions began to emerge as indigenous moneyers added features and designs of their own. None of the earliest Iron Age coinages is meaningfully inscribed, but from the second century b.c. onward many issuers began to put their names—and sometimes such details as a title or mint name—on their coins. Most legends are in Greek or Latin letters or a mixture of the two, although Iberian, Illyrian, and Italiote scripts were all used in certain areas. As Rome became the dominant Mediterranean power, its coinage also began to be imitated by Iron Age groups. Bronze coinage was a relatively late innovation and essentially was confined to western Europe. Trimetallic coinages are found only in a few parts of southeastern Britain and northern France, whose rulers were effectively already under Roman domination.

Two main and essentially discrete zones of Iron Age coinage can be discerned based on different Greek models. Over a vast area of southern Europe, extending from the Balkans and the Danube basin through the Po Basin in Italy and to the Rhône and Garonne basins of southern France, almost all Iron Age coinages were in silver. Farther to the north, however, in Bohemia, southern Germany, northern France, and eventually Britain they were initially of gold. A third, smaller zone existed in Spain and Mediterranean France west of the Rhône, where from the late third to the early first centuries b.c. numerous groups struck bronze (and occasionally silver) coinages, mostly modeled on the contemporary bronze issues of Roman Spain. None of the peoples inhabiting the north European plain or Scandinavia adopted coinage at this stage, possibly because it did not fit with their dominant ideology or value system.

THE "SILVER" ZONE

The earliest Iron Age coinages began during the late fourth century b.c. in the modern Balkans and were faithful imitations of posthumous silver tetradrachms of Philip II of Macedon, with a bearded head on one side and a horseman on the other. They were not so much a local coinage as substitutes for the real thing. The first unmistakably native coinages emerged in the early third century b.c. They were all based on the same model, except in the regions closest to the Black Sea, where the silver tetradrachms of Alexander the Great or his successor, Philip III Arrhidaeus, provided the preferred model; these portray a seated figure instead of the horseman. A few Greek gold types also were copied in this area, but this production quickly ceased.

Over the next century silver coinage spread through eastern Europe, sometimes employing other Greek models. The overall volume increased markedly, and distinctive regional traditions developed, stylistically much further removed from their prototypes, such as the initially dumpy and later broader scyphate (dished) coinages found in the southeastern Carpathians or the facing and doubleheaded issues found in Moesia. Eventually, in the first century b.c., many groups first abandoned Hellenistic models in exchange for Roman types and added legends; they then stopped striking coinage altogether. Silver fractional units or bimetallic coinages in gold and silver, such as the Biatec series of Bohemia and southern Slovakia, also occur, but bronze coins are seen only in Pannonia.

Elsewhere in the silver zone the initial models were provided mainly by the coinages of various Greek colonies. The Celtic inhabitants of northern Italy adopted silver types imitated from the drachms of Massalia, to which legends in Italiote characters later were added; the Massalia drachms also influenced the weight standard of the first silver coinages of the Rhône Valley. In southwestern France several peoples issued coinages with a distinctive cross-shaped emblem on one side, copied from the Greek colony of Rhode (Rosas) in northeastern Spain. This series probably started in the third century b.c. and lasted to the early first century b.c. The peoples of west-central France opted instead to copy coins issued by the neighboring colony at Emporion; subsequently this coinage provided the model for the first small-scale silver coinages in Britain and northern France.

THE "GOLD" ZONE

In western Europe the earliest Iron Age coinages were gold staters or, more rarely, divisions copied from pieces struck by Philip II of Macedon and his successors from c. 340 b.c. onward, with a head on one side and a two-horse chariot on the other. These imitations even faithfully reproduce the symbols used by particular Greek mints, allowing different groups of primary copies to be identified, dispersed over an area extending from southwestern Germany through northern Switzerland and eastern and central France as far as the Atlantic coast. As in eastern Europe, distinctive regional traditions gradually developed, as, for example, in Picardy, where the designs also were influenced by the Greek coinage of southern Italy, or in Brittany, where debased alloys of silver and bronze replaced gold.

In central Europe developments followed a more diverse pattern. The earliest Iron Age coins in Moravia and Bohemia copy a gold stater of Alexander the Great with Victory standing on one side; these coins were in their turn copied in other areas, such as the Upper Danube. In the late third century b.c. the Alexander copies were supplanted by Biatec superficially similar types, influenced by both Greek and Roman coinage. These "Alkis" types themselves had various derivatives, including virtually formless coins shaped somewhat like mussels (including ultimately the series mentioned earlier). The influence of late-third-century b.c. Roman coinage also is apparent on a series of tiny gold coins (about 1⁄24 of a stater) from southern Germany bearing a double head, soon supplanted by concave coins with affinities to the "mussels" tradition, known as "rainbow cups." The rainbow cup coinage in due course spread into the middle Rhineland and eventually surfaced—in very debased form—in the Netherlands.

The minting of Greek-style gold coinage in western and central Europe apparently began shortly after the initial copying of silver in eastern Europe, suggesting that broadly similar processes were at work. One possibility is that barbarians serving as mercenaries for various Hellenistic rulers in the wars following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c. became accustomed to being paid off in precious metal coins and introduced the concept to their home territories, whence the practice gradually spread. The extensive migrations of Celtic-speaking peoples around the same time may be another relevant factor. Neither idea explains why the peoples over such large regions systematically opted for particular models—although, in more general terms, it is easy to see why motifs such as severed heads, mounted warriors, and chariots on the relevant prototypes must have appealed to them.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN WESTERN EUROPE

In the early to middle second century b.c. various peoples in east-central and northern France and the extreme southeast of Britain began to make cast bronze coinage, known as potin after its high tin content. These started as close copies of the bronze coinage of Massalia, but various regional traditions, often with purely native designs, soon emerged. Slightly later several groups in the Rhône Valley and east-central France began striking inscribed silver coinages on a weight standard close to half the Roman denarius (which weighed about 4 grams),
many of them clearly directly inspired by Roman types. These so-called quinarius coinages soon spread into other areas, such as the Rhineland, or as in central and western France, stimulated comparable silver coinages on a slightly different weight standard. By the early first century b.c. these new silver coinages had all but ousted gold, apart from in regions north of the Seine (including Britain), where gold remained the preferred metal.

The Roman conquest of France in the middle of the first century b.c. brought further changes.
Across central France quinarius types proliferated and in places even expanded in volume, while everywhere potin was replaced by struck bronze coinage, which until then had been confined to a few areas, such as western Picardy. Unlike potin, which often circulated over very large areas, many of the new struck bronze issues were quite localized, and some show strong Roman influence. At this stage a few northern rulers, who were probably Roman client kings (the title commonly given to barbarian rulers who had entered into treaties of friendship with Rome), issued trimetallic sets of gold, silver, and bronze coinage.

With the organization of conquered peoples and Roman allies alike into full Roman provinces, native minting rapidly declined. By the beginning of the first century a.d. most Iron Age peoples inside and beyond the boundaries of the empire had stopped issuing coinage altogether or had turned to producing versions of official Roman bronze types. The sole exception was Britain, where in the regions closest to the Continent, Roman client kings issued coinages with Romanized designs and legends, although the other regional coinages retained their traditional types up until the Roman conquest of the island. Under Roman influence, the kingdoms around the Thames estuary seem to have evolved a more complex system of denominations, with numerous base metal types struck in copper or brass as well as in bronze or at different weights; elsewhere in Britain, however, only gold and silver units and divisions were minted.

THE ROLE OF IRON AGE COINAGE

The function of Iron Age coinage is the subject of controversy. The distribution of different types of coins and the kinds of archaeological sites at which they occur provide the best sources of evidence, but the resultant picture is biased toward the location where the coins finally were abandoned, which is not necessarily where they were used. From studying the contexts of discovery, it is clear that most Iron Age gold and silver finds, and many base metal coins as well, were not casual losses but were deposited intentionally by their users, whether for votive reasons or for security. This applies even to settlement finds. Another problem is that in the earlier period only a tiny proportion of coinage was ever deposited—most of it presumably was recycled—further limiting what can be said about the likely uses.

Because coins were predominantly precious metal and thus presumably of high value, the principal reason for issuing Iron Age coinages cannot have been to facilitate exchange, either local or interregional. Like Greek and Roman coinage, Iron Age coinage is far more likely to have been minted to enable its issuers to make various types of payment as well as providing a convenient store of wealth. While the context in which coinage was adopted suggests that securing or rewarding military services was one of its main functions, the nature of the finds leaves little doubt that gold and silver soon were used in many other forms of social and political transactions between members of the elite, often over long distances, and also as religious offerings to their gods.

Although potin coinages were of base metal, their silvery appearance and widespread distributions imply that they, too, were intended primarily for discharging social and perhaps religious obligations. Most struck bronze coinages, on the other hand, are found close to their places of origin and are associated in particular with the leading centers and settlements. This suggests that they were used in a more limited range of payments than other types of Iron Age coinage and only in places where their face values were guaranteed by the issuers.

See alsoCoinage of the Early Middle Ages (vol. 2, part7); Agriculture (vol. 2, part 7).

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Colin Haselgrove