A hoard of Huşi-Vovrieşti coins from Josipovac – Selište near Osijek

Abstract

A small hoard of Huşi-Vovrieşti coins deposited in a Danubian kantharos underneath a Late Iron Age house at the site of Josipovac – Selište near modern Osijek most likely represents a foundation deposit. As such, the cache was not meant to be retrieved, and its deposition was part of a ritual of a sort, one we cannot reconstruct with any certainty. The use of a container otherwise involved in ritualistic practises, funerary and ceremonial, perhaps also the ritual demonetisation of coins with chop-marks, as well as precise and consistent application of these chop-marks, all point to a ritualistic background to the deposition. The hoard was probably interred during the LT C1 period, i.e., during the second half of the 3rd or perhaps at the very beginning of the 2nd century BC. This date is supported by the lower chronological limit of the production of the Huşi-Vovrieşti coins, the fact that the container in which they were deposited was produced either in LT B2 or LT C1 period, with its latest possible date of usage not later than the early 2nd century BC, as well as on an analogy with the hoards of the Huşi-Vovrieşti coins deposited in the Scordiscan area that can be dated independently of this particular coin-type.