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RENATA CIOŁEK Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Polen. Schlesien, Collection Moneta 83, Wetteren 2008, 364 pp., including 7 distribution maps and 5 plates b/w photos. ANDRZEJ ROMANOWSKI Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Polen. Rechtsufriges Masowien und Podlachien, Collection Moneta 84, Wetteren 2008, 212 pp., including 7 distribution maps and 10 plates b/w photos.
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Access to data is vital for all scholars, and the ideas about compiling and publishing corpora of coins go back to the Age of Enlightenment. The two volumes under review are therefore already part of a very long scholarly tradition. More directly the volumes owe their titles as well as their concept to the German Fundmünzen series founded in 1956.1 Since then the finds of Roman coins in Germany have been published systematically and the concept has spread to a significant number of states in the Continent. The first Polish volume in the Fundmünzen series was compiled by Renata Ciołek and dedicated to the finds from Pomerania.2 The two volumes under review follow up on this slightly earlier volume, so it is no surprise that the organization of the material and the layout closely resembles the previous volume: a short introduction serves to inform about the way the catalogue has been set up, and provides information on abbreviations etc. necessary for the user of the catalogues. For a frequent user of the Fundmünzen series this involves no surprises: the finds are listed alphabetically after the provenance, and within each find the coins are listed in the ordinary numismatic sequence. The catalogues are followed by a bibliography and a very short summary (bilingual German and Polish, one page each). Polish site names have created problems for more than one non-Polish scholar. It is therefore with great relief I find an alphabetical list of German site names with cross-references to the modern Polish name of the sites in Ciołek’s volume on Silesia, and a short list on Russian names with references is included Romanowski’s volume (pp. 156–157).3 I would however have liked to find more indices! The volume on Silesia has a short index of some coin and site types, and the volume on eastern Poland seems Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 7, 1956, pp. 9–71. First published in Polish as Katalog znalezisk monet rzymskich na Pomorzu, Światowit Supplement, series A: Antiquity, vol. VI, Institute of Archaeology, Warsaw University, 2001 (including 353 finds), later in an extended German version (406 finds) as Die Fundmünzen der römischen Zeit in Polen. Pommern, Collection Moneta 67, Wetteren 2007. 3 Romanowski’s volume includes 10 sites in Belarussia. 1 2
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to have planned a similar index (p. 177), but no page references have been inserted. Any use of the volumes therefore requires tedious browsing through the whole volume. One may think that making indices would have become an easier task with modern digital technology, but the lack of indices is as pronounced as they are in the volumes of the German Fundmünzen. The volumes present raw data in the sense that there is no discussion of or conclusions drawn from the material. This is not said to downplay the very large effort put into the preparation and presentation of databases – for this is what these volumes really are. But the authors of these compilations are no doubt the most qualified persons to discuss and evaluate the material. And indeed they both have published discussions and conclusions on the finds, albeit not in connection with the catalogues.4 Of course, several earlier compilations of Roman coin finds from Poland have already been published: for example an overview of Roman coin hoards,5 and well as some regional6 and thematic7 compilations. However, Ciołek’s volume on the Roman coins finds from Silesia represents the first overall compilation of material from this region. The catalogue comprises more than 10,000 coins, most of which were found before WWII, from an area of 43,000 km2. Among the 487 sites catalogued at least 48 hoards have been reported.8 Romanowski’s work includes 130 sites with 268 finds. The total number of coins from these finds is estimated to be more than 10,000, but only a small number of them have been preserved. Comparing the over-all distribution maps (Karte 1) of the two catalogues large differences in find density are evident, with a very large number of finds in Silesia along the Oder. The differences in the typological composition of the coin finds are also revealed when studying the distribution maps of the two catalogues, but becomes more pronounced when looking into the conclusions published in the articles mentioned above: Silesia presents a relatively higher number of bronze coins, radiates and aurei and thus a more varied find spectrum compared to the eastern part of Poland.
4 R. CIOŁEK: ”Roman Coin Finds in Silesia: Conclusion from the New Inventory” (bilingual text: Polish and English), Wiadomości Numizmatyczne (Numismatic News) LIII, 2009, pp. 146–182; A. ROMANOWSKI: ”Znaleziska monet rzymskich z terenów kultury wielbarskiej na Podlasiu, prawobrzeżnym Mazowszu i zachodniej Białorusi”, Wiadomości Numizmatyczne (Numismatic News) LI, 2007, number: 1(183), pp. 29–53 (with English summary). 5 A. KUNISZ, Katalog skarbów monet rzymskich odkrytych na ziemiach polskich, Warsaw 1973. 6 A. KUNISZ, Znaleziska monet rzymskich z Małopolski (Finds of Roman Coins in Little Poland), Biblioteka Archeologiczna t. 30, 1985; S. KUBIAK, Znaleziska monet rzymskich z Mazowsza i Podlasia, 1979. 7 Catalogue in A. BURSCHE, Later Roman-Barbarian Contacts in Central Europe, Numismatic Evidence, Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike, Band 11, Berlin 1996. 8 CIOŁEK, ”Roman Coin Finds...” .
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While Silesia has relatively few finds made recently, the picture is different in northern Masovia and Podlachia: Romanowski’s catalogue covers roughly half the area included in Kubiak’s catalogue of Roman coin finds from Masovia and Podlachia, published in 1979, and a comparison of the overlapping parts of their distribution maps is revealing. The area north of the Vistula seems almost empty on Kubiak’s map, but in particular the number of single finds has grown considerably in the last 30 years. This large number of recent single finds consists of mainly denarii and subaerati of the second century resulting from amateur surveys. Many of them are known thanks to the work of Dymowski, who have collected information on coins found by amateurs using metal detectors,9 or registered by Dymowski and Romanowski in collaboration. This considerable increase in single finds of denarii as the result of detector surveys is closely comparable to the situation in Denmark, where all coin finds made by amateur detectorists are being centrally registered, and it constitutes a constant warning: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The many new additions is not only seen in the volume on Rechtsufigen Masowien und Podlachien when compared to the earlier work by Kubiak, but there is also a marked difference between Ciołek’s first and second publication of the finds from Pomerania. Here there is an increase from 353 to 406 finds (+ 15%!!!) in only six years, and a quick check of some of the many new single finds reveals that these are also the result of Dymowski’s laudable registration of amateur finds. This is certainly a problem to address in the future, and not only in Poland. First it would of course be vital to ensure the scientific registration of the many new finds, and second it would be useful to find a way to update the Fundmünzen catalogues continuously. HELLE W. HORSNÆS The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen Contact the author at: Helle.Horsnæ
[email protected]
9 A. DYMOWSKI, ”Recording Recent Roman Coin Finds from Poland (2004–2007)” [Polish summary: Rejestracja znalezisk monet rzymskich z terenu Polski (2004–2007)], Wiadomości Numizmatyczne LII, 2, 2008, pp. 195–207; IDEM, Znaleziska monet z terenu Polski rejestrowane w pierwszych latach XXI wieku. Aspekty źródłoznawcze, Zielona Góra 2011.
