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COIN (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:
Someone commenting on the Petra elephants mentioned the trunks were too long. The reason cannot be artistic but no-one apart from Wiley cares to give any explanation.


That's the spirit, with so much new explanatory potential there is bound to be the odd plunge into the canyon for Wiley....but it really doesn't matter at this stage....
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1399.html

The elephant trampling the snake is thought to be the first coin issued by Caesar, the issue was supposedly produced by a mint moving with his army. The reverse of this coin alludes to Caesar's position as Pontifex Maximus, while the obverse shows an elephant trampling a dragon or a snake, with the legend CAESAR in the exergue.

So get this: we are in the year 49 BC (whatever) of the famous crossing of the Rubicon, civil war is imminent. Caesar's first coin issue is a symbolic "elephant trampling a snake/serpent" well known warring animals, err, from Indian mythology.


But "Caesar" wasn't the only one minting elephant coins.....

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1379.html#caecilia47
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Wile E. Coyote


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In 49 BC, the last Republican civil war was initiated after Julius Caesar defied senatorial orders to disband his army following the conclusion of hostilities in Gaul. He crossed over the Rubicon river with the 9th Legion, a clear violation of Roman Law, and marched to Rome


We now get a series of fictional battles the most important of which is Caesar defeating Pompey at the fictional battle of Pharsalus, this leads the remnants of the senate opposition to flee. Caesar pursues Pompey to Egypt....and then in hot pursuit of the rest of his enemies to Africa......

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1379.html#caecilia47

Here we run into again our coined character Metellus Scipio a long standing foe of Caesar ....it was Scipio, in January 49 BC, who had persuaded the senate to issue the ultimatum to Caesar that had made war "inevitable". Scipio had also unsucessfully commanded the centre, for Pompey, at Pharsalus. (A bad omen). Notwithstanding his previous failiures Scipio assumes charge of the oppostion including a mighty force of 60 war elephants.......
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Mick Harper
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Just like the one (or as may be, two) Scipios that did for the Carthaginians. 'Round round, get around, they get around,' as Brian Wilson once informed us.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
Just like the one (or as may be, two) Scipios that did for the Carthaginians. 'Round round, get around, they get around,' as Brian Wilson once informed us.


Thats the ticket....and the return ticket as well.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Battle of Thapsus was an important engagement in Caesar's Civil War that took place in modern Tunisia. The Republican forces (including 60 war elephants) were led by Caecilius Metellus Scipio, and they were opposed by veteran legions who were loyal to Julius Caesar. It took place during 46 BC two to three years after the crossing of the Rubicon

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1399.html

Metellus Scipio's army circled Thapsus in order to approach the city by its northern side. Anticipating Caesar's approach, it remained in tight battle order flanked by its elephant cavalry. Caesar's position was typical of his style, with him commanding the right side and the cavalry and archers flanked. The threat of the elephants led to the additional precaution of reinforcing the cavalry with five cohorts.

One of Caesar's trumpeters sounded the battle. Caesar's archers attacked the elephants, causing them to panic and trample their own men. The elephants on the left flank charged against Caesar's center, where Legio V Alaudae was placed. This legion sustained the charge with such bravery that afterwards they wore an elephant as a symbol. After the loss of the elephants, Metellus Scipio started to lose ground. Caesar's cavalry outmanoeuvred its enemy, destroyed the fortified camp, and forced its enemy into retreat. King Juba's allied troops abandoned the site and the battle was decided.


As appears the case in these accounts advantage of the war elephant is largely symbolic. Unless the enemy runs, then (as you might expect?) the elephant is just as likely to trample uncontrollably either side...... They appear to have very little actual military value.

Still the symbolic power of the Elephant is such that Caesar issues his Elephant coin 3 years before Thapsus takes place and Legio v triumphantly adopts the Elephant as its standard. It only goes to show what you can achieve with vision....
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Wile E. Coyote


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A sceat (Old English: [ʃæt]; pl. sceattas) was a small, thick silver coin minted in England, Frisia and Jutland during the Anglo-Saxon period.

They are actually found all over the North Sea Area.....

The huge volume of finds made in the last thirty years using metal detectors has radically altered understanding of this coinage and, while it is now clear that these coins were in everyday use across eastern and southern England in the early 8th century, it is also apparent that the current organization is in considerable need of adjustment.

They are found wherever metal detecting is popular......

Sceattas rarely carry legends of any kind, though a small number do name the mint of London and others carry short runic legends such as 'Aethiliraed' and 'Efe', which probably refer to moneyers rather than kings.


Mysteriously that looks like Ethelred and Offa to me.

Associating sceattas with particular mints or kingdoms is very difficult and must be based primarily upon study of find-spots.

The find spots are areas of metal detecting.... and 1970s and 1980s rescue archaeology, where archaeologists interested with the Anglo Saxons were looking for (and found) a number of early Anglo Saxon emporium, associated with the place name WIC.

The chronology of the sceattas is also very hard to unravel. Some of the earliest series use the same designs as the pale gold thrymsas (similar to the continental Latin: tremissis; notionally one-third of a pure gold solidus) and, by analogy with coins from the better-understood Frankish material, can be dated to the 680s

OK so the Anglo Saxons we are led to believe ignored the deserted walled Roman chesters, eg Winchester (you have to admire the Anglo Saxon work ethic leaving alone the buiding material) and set up their very own local trading emporium at eg Hamwic, along with their newly created mint. At this mint they cunningly evolved new designs (you have to admire the Anglo Saxon creativity), err many of these derive from the much hated Roman Tremissis.......

One or more types can be attributed with more or less confidence to Wessex, Mercia, Sussex, Essex, Kent, Northumbria, and East Anglia

Blimey, despite the difficuly of locating mints, everybody now has their own coin type. That is at least one for each kingdom. How very equitable. It's amazing what you can uncover by logical inference....a town, a mint a coin type......

There was much copying and debasement, and weight could fluctuate considerably (c. 0.8–1.3 grams). There are relatively few hoards from this period with which to construct even a relative chronology, and any new discovery could radically alter our current understanding. The end of the sceattas is especially difficult to pinpoint, and it is likely that there was a period of some decades in the middle of the 8th century when very few if any coins were being produced in England.


Eh.... We are not sure are we? .......We want to believe that the Sceat is some sort of native A/S proto penny, but the evidence is against.
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Mick Harper
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They keep going on about the eighth century. Is there any absolute evidence for this? It all seems to strengthen the argument that the Anglo-Saxon/Viking/Norman era followed on directly from the Roman era. I think we can assume, for a start, the eighth century never existed
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
They keep going on about the eighth century. Is there any absolute evidence for this? It all seems to strengthen the argument that the Anglo-Saxon/Viking/Norman era followed on directly from the Roman era. I think we can assume, for a start, the eighth century never existed


Wiki wrote:
The Latin word vicus was also applied to the smallest administrative unit of a provincial town within the Roman Empire, and to an ad hoc provincial civilian settlement that sprang up close to and because of a nearby official Roman site, usually a military garrison or state-owned mining operation.


Wiki wrote:
A "-wich town" is a settlement in Anglo-Saxon England characterised by extensive artisanal activity and trade – an "emporium". The name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon suffix -wīc, signifying "a dwelling[1] or fortified[2] place". Such settlements were usually coastal and many have left material traces found during excavation.[3]

Eilert Ekwall wrote: "OE wīc, an early loan-word from Lat vicus, means ‘dwelling, dwelling-place; village, hamlet, town; street in a town; farm, esp. a dairy-farm’. . . . It is impossible to distinguish neatly between the various senses. Probably the most common meaning is ‘dairy-farm’. . . . In names of salt-working towns . . . wīc originally denoted the buildings connected with a salt-pit or even the town that grew up around it. But a special meaning ‘salt-works’, found already in DB, developed.


Wiki wrote:
Vikings (Old English: wicing—"pirate",[1] Danish and Bokmål: vikinger; Swedish and Nynorsk: vikingar; Icelandic: víkingar, from Old Norse) were Norse seafarers, mainly speaking the Old Norse language, who raided and traded from their Northern European homelands across wide areas of northern, central, eastern and western Europe, during the late 8th to late 11th centuries.[2][3] The term is also commonly extended in modern English and other vernaculars to the inhabitants of Viking home communities during what has become known as the Viking Age. This period of Nordic military, mercantile and demographic expansion constitutes an important element in the early medieval history of Scandinavia, Estonia, the British Isles, France, Kievan Rus' and Sicily.


wic-coins
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Wile E. Coyote


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It is interesting how ancient coins become classified

https://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=50019

CELTIC, Britain. Iceni. "Queen Boudicca." Late 1st Century BC. AR Unit (13mm, 1.15 gm). 'Horse/Face' type. Celticized head right; branch behind / Horse right; wheel above, lozenge below. Hobbs 3605; Van Arsdell 794-1; SCBC 434. CCI 00.0531. Lightly toned VF

Fair enough

I see a head, a branch.......a horse, wheel, and lozenge.

But maybe I only see them because after reading the label I am looking for them?

In actual fact, as I have been looking at Anglo Saxon coins I first thought (before reading the label) the head was a swirling porcupine. Then I saw a large tree and a branch. I still can't see a Boudicca, in fact some have proposed, I since learn....he is a local Norfolk god.

In fact the extensive use of pellets makes it look like a join the dots picture or images composed out of star map.

Maybe it's Runic?

The branch then becomes Tiwaz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwaz_(rune)

The lozenge becomes Ingwaz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngvi

You can read a lot of inferences into a coin.
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Mick Harper
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CELTIC, Britain. Iceni. "Queen Boudicca." Late 1st Century BC
.
You can look at it the other way round. You put quote marks round "Queen Boudicca" to indicate that you are not claiming it necessarily is. That covers you legally, but if it is, even if it only sort of is, then it is definitely Celtic and Iceni. Which are so rare they're worth a bundle. Though I personally wouldn't buy this one since Queen Boudica is late 1st Century AD.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The idea that sceats are barbarous radiates is a long forgotten idea, now due for serious reconsideration.....as our golden light shines on the dark ages.

It isn't going to happen within orthodoxy (the word barbarous will ensure that). So it's up to Wiley. You can help.

The mysterious porcupine is a detail of the radiating crown. That means it is a percentage of the crown...half a crown. quarter a crown....etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarous_radiate
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wiki wrote:
Barbarous radiates are imitations of the antoninianus, a type of coin issued during the Roman Empire, which are so named due to their crude style and prominent radiant crown worn by the emperor.


Hill defines these coins as imitations of official coins, ie official is in having come from an imperial mint, that are crude copies. He states something rather incredible in his 1948 paper to the American Numismatics Society, along the lines that these coins are considered so crude and barbarous they are simply often disregarded/discarded/thrown aside by archaeologists.

How he would know they are thrown aside I am not sure, but he gives an example of a hoard clearly misdated as the evidence from the radiate is ignored. It's an interesting, provocative statement, after all one man's rubbish is often another man's gold.

Wiki wrote:
Barbarous radiates were issued privately primarily during the Crisis of the Third Century in the western provinces. They are not generally regarded as forgeries since they were smaller than standard issues and probably functioned as small change.


It does raise the questions, what is small change? what is copy? what is forgery? what is recycling?

Wiki wrote:
Although earlier numismatists, notably Philip V. Hill, theorized that barbarous radiates were produced long after their prototypes and into the Dark Ages and Saxon period, more recent works argue that they were generally contemporary to their prototypes.

Yes, modern folks are keen to stress a dark age currency gap. Hill seeing the similarity between Radiates and Sceats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceat was keen to bridge the gap.....


Wiki wrote:
Legends of barbarous radiates range from correct and exact copies of the prototype, to a jumble of unintelligible, meaningless letters and symbols. Smaller pieces known as minims, which are less than 10 mm in diameter, are often anepigraphic. For very degraded barbarous imitations, there is a tendency to emphasize a particular feature of the prototype, in this case the radiate crown.


Sol is prominent. Blimey, can Hill help shine a light on the Dark Ages?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Coin is happy to report that we have not been noticed by gazillions of people, but on the downside barbarous radiates has attracted just a couple of page views.

I wouldn't worry but most are mine.

Radiates might not be cutting edge just yet.......
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Mick Harper
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How strange. I was going to say this morning that
a) 'barbarous radiates' was exactly the kind of academese label that is both meaningless and all embracing and therefore
b) is certain to lead to 'careful ignoral'
but the heat got to me.

You have the floor, Wiley, and the world before you.
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