International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

NUMISMATICS
Chairs: 
Zeliha Demirel Gökalp, Bruno Callegher
Sergio Basso
, 
Ten Little Coins
Bruno Callegher
, 
Un trésor de solidi (Jérusalem) et la monnaie d’or d’Héraclius en Syrie-Palestine
Maria Vrij
, 
Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ.’: 
Justinian II, the Image of Christ and Taxation
Vera Guruleva
, 
A Hoard of the Fragments of Byzantine and Imitation Coins XIII Century 
from the Territory of South-West Rus’
Ceren Ünal
, 
The “Ağacik Hoard”: Billon Trachae Coins from the Nicean and Latin Empires
Tentscho Popov
, 
Zwei neue numismatische Quellen für die Geschichte von Thessaloniki und Epiros nach 1230
Vera Atanassova
, 
Entre Byzance et l’Occident : les monnaies de Jean Sratsimir (1356-1396)
Zeliha Demirel Gökalp
, 
Byzantine AE Coin Finds from Phrygia

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Sergio Basso
Università degli Studi Roma 3, Rome, Italy; 
[e-mail]
Ten Little Coins
In 1973, during the work of preparation of a vineyard, they found the remnants of what seemed 
a Roman villa at Casino Vezzani, near Ortona on the Adriatic Sea, in Abruzzo, central Italy.
In the context of the villa, during the excavation campaign in 1988-1991, they located and 
excavated a canalized cistern, and consequently emptied it from the mud that had filled it over the 
centuries.
Because of the difficult condition of the excavation, they had to consider the whole cistern as 
a single stratigraphic unit.
What I want to concentrate on in this talk is the ten bronze coins they found, apparently 
corroded to the point of being unreadable. They can be read, though.
Not only were they were unpublished so far; I could not find any mention of their recovery in 
the catalogue of the exhibit following the excavations.
On the basis of archaeological and literary elements, Staffa 1993 hypothesized a Coptic influence 
in several Crecchio products, a probable result of a privileged maritime trade route, or evidence of 
a direct Egyptian presence, due to Egyptian elements of the Byzantine troops of Justinian, landing 
in Italy for the campaign against the Goths.
Crecchio, a farm with a continuous existence from Late Republican times, would have been 
used as the basis for a Byzantine garrison during the military movements in the Picenum, the 
historical region corresponding to present day Marche and Abruzzo.
Staffa’s hypothesis in 1993 triggered a sort of mutual conditioning in several scholars’ 
reconstructions, for example Zanini 1998 and C. Pavolini 1998.
Consequently, several SU in archaeological sites in Abruzzo have been dated to the II half of 
VI c. using Crecchio pottery as an archaeological fossil.
The analysis of the coin hoard found in the cistern will dismantle Staffa’s thesis completely and 
shed new light on the market economy of Late Antiquity and Early Byzantine Empire in central Italy.

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