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Byzantine Coins from the 6th and the 7th Century Found in Poland and their East Central European Context

Byzantine Coins from the 6th and the 7th Century Found in Poland and their East Central European Context

By M.Salamon and M.Woáoszyn

Paper given at IEHC 2006: XIV International Economic History Congress – Helsinki, Finland (2006)

Introduction: In this paper we discuss coins from the 6th and 7th centuries, passing over the Pomeranian finds from the beginning of the 6th century. A small series of coins (up to 20 items; up to 14 locations) comes from the period that we are interested in. The coinage of Justinian I is clearly dominant (up to 13 items), coins of later rulers constitute issues of Justin II (2 items), Maurikios (1 item) and Heraclius (3 items); chronology of one coin has not been determined.

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In the material that we analysed (20 items) bronze coins (15 items) dominate considerably, the only exception being some silver issues (4 items – 3 items of Justinian I – Rabka [2], Cheám and one item of Heraclius in Szadzko) and golden ones (one item of Heraclius in Zolków).

Such a small group of finds would not have been worth much attention if it was not for the fact that we have to deal with material that is accumulating rapidly – in the middle of the 20th century only few (up to eight) items were known from this group (based on very general remarks about coins in the Bielsko-Biala hoard [2 items] , Konczyce Male and the so-called stray finds from Biecz, Cheám, Przemysl, Sulejów and the vicinity of ĩywiec. It is necessary to emphasise that at that time not even a single issue from the 7th century was known.

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