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A resident of a Southwest -German city who worked on a construction project has dug up a stock of medieval coins around 1320 AD.
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The value of the approximately 1,600 recovered coins was considered sufficient to have bought 150 sheep at that time.
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The coins include several peppermints through Germany, Switzerland and France.
While he placed underground pipes near a swimming pool, Claus Völker, a resident of the German municipality of Glottertal, found “small metal plates” in the earth when he started his work, according to a translated explanation of the State Office for monument Preservation of the Stuttgart Regional Council.
Archaeologists fell on the site the same day and quickly discovered around 1,000 coins. The next day rain changed the ground into knee-deep mud, but the archaeologists armed themselves with metal detectors and still recovered around 600 extra metal coins.
Andreas Haasis-Berner, archaeologist at the State Office for Monument Preservation, said that most of the coins come from the Breisach, Zofingen and Freiburg peeling, all made somewhere around 1320 AD. The collection also includes insulated coins in Basel, St. Gallen, Zurich, Laufenburg and Colmar.
How valuable was the collection when they were probably lost in German soil? “You could have bought around 150 sheep with the coins,” said Haasis-Berner in the statement.
The experts credit Völker's attention in the “discovery of one of the most extensive medieval coin treasures of the last decades.” Without that the coins would still be just a bunch of junk in the dirt.
The region that have found the coins can contain extra hidden secrets based on the past of the site. “Glottertal has been one of the most important mine areas for the dukes of Freiburg,” said Haasis-Berner, according to Live Science. “The site where the coins were found was a main arrangement for miners.”
In 2016, in nearby Switzerland, more than 200 coins from the 1300s were accidentally discovered in a forest near Zurich. However, those coins were only enough to buy 25 sheep. These finds, together with others in the region, help tell a historical story, sometimes of political instability or payments for mercenaries.
Not only does the new stock of the currency give a shock of excitement to the region and offers a new trove to investigate, but it can lead to a deeper insight into the region at the time. “The evaluation of this coin treasure will make it possible to make explanations about the mint circulation in Breisgau, the peppermint activity in the peppermints, the silver trade, but also about mining in the Glottertal,” said Haasis-Berner.
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