Stories of travels and coins

Stories of travels and coins

Despite the attention that everyone pays to the economic heritage carried in their pockets, losing a coin is a widespread timeless custom. The discovery of these dispersed artifacts indicates the passage through places, the origins of travellers and the consequent intersection of cultures. The two oldest numismatic finds from Saepinum can be retraced to other territorial contexts that in pre-Roman times had contacts with local communities. The first one is a silver didrachm from the mid-third century BC, minted in Taranto. On the obverse it bears the head of a crowned nymph and on the reverse a young man crowning a horse, the initials TA and a dolphin on a tripod. The other coin of the type of King Prusias of Bithynia, a Roman province on the Anatolian peninsula, can be dated at the end of the second century BC. In recent excavations conducted in 2023, numerous other coins from the Republican and late Republican periods were found. There are several coins from the mint of Rome attributable to the second and first centuries BC, and to the imperial period. From the early medieval period there is a gold tarì from the mint of Salerno, while the late medieval denarii belong to different areas of numismatic issue. A Horse of Charles V is the oldest document in the collection, which brings us into the transformations of the first half of the sixteenth century.