Archaeological sensation in Wesseling: Largest coin hoard from Hadrianic times discovered in Germany

It was a weekend in October last year. 52-year-old Oliver Riedl set out to indulge in his hobby: walking through the terrain with the metal probe, or, as he says: probing. The trail that a plow had made in a field a few days earlier seemed promising to him. Riedl didn't get far before the probe gave the first signal. A little later, Riedl held several metal plates about one centimeter in diameter in his hand. Although the plates were stuck with earth and covered with corrosion, it was clear to him that they were not buttons or any common coins. They were Roman denarii, 15 in one fell swoop. And the probe reported more metal. “Then I thought to myself: Something is wrong here.”

The next day, Riedl reported the find to the responsible archaeological conservationists at the Rhineland Regional Association (LVR), with whose permission he was traveling. And they soon set out to excavate. This summer, after the harvest was taken from the field, they upped the ante. The result has now been presented in the LVR State Museum in Bonn: several hundred Roman coins are spread out in a display case. More are currently being cleaned, says state archaeologist Erich Claßen, “all in all we found 934 Roman denarii in Wesseling.” That's a total of 3.1 kilograms of silver. Because the coins were buried together in a ceramic vessel, the researchers speak of a hoard find. They also use the term treasure, a word otherwise avoided in the sober technical language of archaeologists.

Shards of pottery also came to light. Even remains of barley straw, which was probably used to pad the pot, were found. The oldest coin comes from the Roman Republic period and was minted in 148 BC. It was minted in the 1st century BC, explains Claßen. The youngest coin is around 270 years younger and dates back to 124 or 125 AD and comes from the reign of Emperor Hadrian. One can assume that the vessel filled with coins was also buried at this time, says Claßen - and adds a superlative: "It is the largest coin hoard from the Hadrianic period that we have in Germany."

In order to be able to give such an assessment, expert knowledge like that of Rahel Otte is required. The archaeologist, who works for the LVR's Archaeological Conservation Department, specializes in coin studies. Using coins, she says, it is usually possible to establish a connection between the find and a written source. Coins mark the transition from archaeological to historical research. An embossed emperor's portrait, no matter how rusty, always provides information about the years in which the coin was put into circulation. Roman denarii were also more than just means of payment. The small round images on the back also served as a means of communication for the rulers that can be seen on the front, with which the news of a glorious peace agreement or the heroic subjugation of a barbarian people could be spread throughout the empire. The Wesseling coin treasure is full of such picture stories.

Particularly interesting, says Otte, is a coin that has a so-called counterstamp stamped on it. When the original embossing became worn and no longer recognizable after decades or even centuries of use, another inscription, an abbreviation or a sequence of letters was struck into the metal. Firstly, this served as confirmation that we were still dealing with an official Roman means of payment. And secondly, the propaganda of an emperor who wanted to legitimize a potentially controversial rule with a subsequently applied stamp.

She has often dated Roman non-ferrous metal coins with counterstamps, says Otte. But she had not yet had a Roman silver coin in her hand that had such a subsequent embossing. Otte shows the reporter a denarius that, in addition to the blurred outline of a head, shows a sharply contoured M and a mirror-inverted P. She assumes that this re-coining took place around the year 70, i.e. in the time of Emperor Vespasian. By the way, this is the man who said: “Money doesn’t stink.” How fitting.

Rahel Otte says it takes her an average of 15 minutes to identify and date a coin - that's almost 234 hours of work time for 934 coins. Of course, sometimes things go faster. But sometimes it takes much longer. It took almost two hours to identify a coin from the current find, of which only the lower half was in the Wesselinger field. At least there was a hot lead: part of a hairy chin can be seen on the fragment. “We know that Hadrian was the first Roman emperor to wear a beard,” says Otte. Because Hadrian was a fan of the Greek philosophers - and of their beard fashion.

But many more details had to be analyzed before Otte was sure: the denarius was minted in 124 or 125 AD. This makes this the youngest coin in the entire treasure trove, says the numismatist. And this also gives us an indication that the jar full of coins was buried around this time. Otte now wants to take a closer look at the composition of the find and compare it with other Roman coin treasures - in the hope of being able to draw further conclusions.

Who these coins belonged to and why they were hidden – one can currently only speculate, says state archaeologist Erich Claßen. “It can be assumed that someone wanted to keep this money safe, as there were no banks back then.” And the owner may have died before he could give his heirs a clue to the hiding place. Perhaps he lived on one of the Roman estates, of which there were several between Cologne and Bonn. They were used to supply food to the many military camps in the region. In the 1980s, archaeologists uncovered the remains of such a Villa Rustica just around 200 meters north of the current coin find. Claßen estimates the previous value of the treasure as follows: “At that time, a simple soldier in the legion earned 300 denarii per year.” Half of this was kept for equipment and food. A legionnaire could set aside a maximum of 150 denarii per year - and would then have needed six years to save up such a treasure.

The detectorist Oliver Riedl is now entitled to a finder's fee. How high this will be is now being considered by the responsible NRW Ministry for Homeland, Municipal Affairs, Construction and Digitalization, explains Erich Claßen. He himself has to evaluate the find - he has decided to classify it as “extraordinary”. The only category above that is “unique”.

Riedl says it's not important to him how high the sum is. For him, the treasure is the find of a lifetime anyway. And a reason to take a closer interest in the future in what the region in which he lives once looked like. When the father of the family, who works as a technician at the University of Bonn, bought a metal probe five years ago, during the Corona period, he was only interested in passing the time and tracking down things. Sometimes he discovered an old bottle cap, sometimes a bent piece of metal, which he then duly presented to the Office for Archaeological Monument Preservation. But now he was allowed to search the area together with the professional archaeologists for more denarii. “I was able to be present at almost every step of the process.” Riedl learned to see the terrain through the eyes of antiquity. The treasure discovery opened up another, a new world for him.