Three large hoards of late antique coins have been discovered in an ancient Roman residential block in the city of Sinon in northeastern France. Rather than being secret during periods of instability, however, they were carefully installed and regularly maintained and accessed.
Senone was an important city of the Medioterra tribe, documented in Roman sources after the conquest of Gaul (57 BC). Although pre-Roman Gaulish remains have been found, excavations have been too sparse to draw any conclusions about the extent and nature of the settlement. The excavations revealed the remains of timber-framed structures that proved it to be a fully developed settlement from the mid-2nd century BC to the beginning of the Roman period.
The excavations also revealed how Gaelic settlement changed after the conquest. In the 1st century AD, the growth of the city with Roman building methods led to an explosion of stone quarrying. The wood and earth structures that characterized the Gaelic settlement gave way to stone construction, and builders turned to local sources of limestone to supply it. No fewer than 10 pits were found at the site, some as much as 10 feet deep. As the city expanded, the mine pit was reused. Scientific analysis will determine what they were used for, but possibilities include storage spaces or latrines.
The reconstructed stone houses and streets were laid out in a typical Roman style, and the survival of many remains makes it possible for archaeologists to map the buildings, their architectural features and therefore the economic status of their owners. At least three buildings had living rooms with concrete floors, hypocaust heating, carefully designed cellars, ovens and courtyards at the back. The occupants of these houses were well off, possibly the commercial class such as merchants or successful artisans.
Hoards of coins were kept inside large amphorae in pits dug inside houses. These were in different houses, but all of them contained thousands of pf coins in the same type of container dating from the last quarter of the 3rd century to the first decade of the 4th century.
[T]HESE reserves should be seen… as a snapshot of complex monetary management, planned over the medium to long term within a household or administration, capable of creating and withdrawing reserves at different intervals. Preliminary analysis, observations made during excavations do not reveal a hasty hiding: the vessels containing these coins were carefully placed in well-prepared pits, perfectly vertical thanks to the use of stones. In two cases, the presence of a few coins stuck on the outer face of the vessel clearly indicates that they were placed there after the vessel was buried, before the pit was filled with sediment. Finally, the location of both deposits discovered during excavations, apparently in common living rooms and at a height very close to contemporary ground (the necks of the vases would have been flush with the surface), indicates that they were easily accessible to their owner.
All hypotheses will be tested, but it is possible that, according to our current knowledge, there is a link between these three subcontinental coin hoards, dated between 280 and 310 AD, and to the known military occupation at Sinon, which is attested from the same period and located only 150 meters from the excavation area. This highlights the importance of documenting the archaeological context of these coin hoards, which will be clarified by post-exhumation studies in the coming months. Their unusual nature lies less in the discovery of large quantities of coins (some thirty coin hoards are known in the Musee Department alone) than in the possibility of documenting the context in which they were collected, which is rare. The battle against archaeological looting, which de-contextualizes scientific research and society as a whole, is a critical issue for understanding the motivations behind monetary deposits.
