Some of the 1,500 silver coins discovered in the Black Forest region of Germany.Courtesy of the State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council
Posted on 08/20/2024 5:47:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists in Germany have unearthed more than 1,500 medieval silver coins after a citizen unexpectedly noticed what looked like "small metal plates" while digging during a construction project...
The finding, which was made in May while workers laid pipe near a swimming pool in the municipality of Glottertal, bears clues to what the mining and minting trades looked like in the area 650 years ago, according to a translated statement from the Stuttgart Regional Council.
Back in 1949, archaeologists in Freiburg (also known as Freiburg im Breisgau) found about 5,000 coins from around the 1280s, but no medieval coins had been found in Glottertal, which is about 6 miles (10 kilometers) northeast of Freiburg. Glottertal sits in the Black Forest mountains in an area known for its picturesque valleys and dark pine forests, which are dotted with orchards and vineyards. Freiburg was founded by the House of Zähringen, a dynasty ruled by dukes from around 1120 to 1218. When the Zähringer line ended, the city was taken over by the House of Urach...
During the pipeline installation, Haasis-Berner received a call from Claus Völker, a Glottertal citizen who said he had found some coins during the construction project.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Some of the 1,500 silver coins discovered in the Black Forest region of Germany.Courtesy of the State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council
All I ever find with my detector is old beer can pull tabs and nails...............
I have a big jar full of loose change. I wonder how many sheep I can get for it.
You wool never find out unless you ask.
Archaeologists of the future will conclude that pull tabs must have been a form of currency, or maybe they had a ritual purpose. And in a way, they’d be right on both counts. :^)
I got a very nice Whites metal detector for Christmas when I was a teen in the 70s. The excitement of digging up buried treasure everywhere faded when I realized it was more like I was working as an unpaid trash collector. Pull tabs were especially bad back then, though the discriminator circuit worked fairly well to screen out aluminum.
We moved to Colorado shortly after that, and my dad and I hit every ghost town we could find. I picked up quite a few signals from the detector, but quickly found out why they call the area the Rocky Mountains. It was one thing to detect something (whatever it was), but quite another to dig through the solid rock that was beneath most soil up there. It still provided a lot of adventure and got me out to places I might not have explored otherwise, though.
This was obviously a TEMPLE...............
A hoard? I think it might be a tranche, or maybe a trove. Maybe a bunch.
It’s a sh*tload of dimes!
150 Sheep is not too baaaaaa....d.
You post some interesting stories about these ancient treasure troves.
Keep up the good work!
Was this where the Black Forest cake was invented?
Yeah — that oughta get all your mugs, pugs, thugs, bulldykes and sh*tkickers, et al, through the toll booth alright.
I was an exchange student in Freiburg im Breisgau in the early 1990s. It was a really pretty college town with a medieval history then. I’ve heard its a lot more dangerous due to the influx of hordes of “migrants” (ie military age muslim males).
Sad. I really liked Freiburg a lot.
“ while workers laid pipe near a swimming pool”
Ive laid some pipe by a swimming pool myself a few times…
J’acuzzi!
Hey, someone has to take out the Euro-trash. :^)
As the medieval marauders closed in, the guy was burying these coins, intending to come back to retrieve them later. His neighbor was piling his own household possessions onto a haywain, saw this, and asked, "did you hoard all that yourself?" The guy replied, "my sister hoard half of it."
The classics just never go out of style.
The shear volume of coins is impressive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
