Two amateur archaeologists prospecting a plowed field near Holzthum, a village in northern Luxembourg, set off a find that ended with 141 Roman gold coins and the foundations of a fortified Roman building. Luxembourg’s Culture Ministry and the National Institute for Archaeological Research, known by its French initials INRA, announced the hoard in December 2024 and called it “a major archaeological discovery.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the ministry’s words, “it is extremely rare to be able to study an ancient coin hoard in its entirety in its archaeological context.” Quotes from the ministry’s French-language statement are translated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coins are solidi, the standard gold coin of the late Roman Empire, each about an inch (2.5 centimeters) across, struck in the names of nine emperors who reigned between A.D. 364 and 408.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scientific study of the hoard counts 38 gold coins from the finders’ first survey, which the two “promptly reported” to INRA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under Luxembourg’s cultural heritage law, the state compensated those entitled to the hoard with 308,600 euros, about $322,000 at the time. The ministry says the figure came from an independent numismatic appraisal that took into account the excellent condition of the coins and a few rare pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three of those rare pieces were struck for Eugenius, a usurper who reigned for only two years, from A.D. 392 to 394.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
INRA ran the excavation from 2020 to 2024. To make sure every buried object was found, the ministry says, the digging was done with the greatest care and stretched over several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ground had been fought over in the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944-1945, and the archaeologists worked with the Luxembourg Army’s bomb disposal service, SEDAL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the field lay the foundations of an imposing fortified building from the late Roman Empire, which the archaeologists identified as a burgus, a small Roman fortified tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coins had probably been buried together in a container that rotted away, perhaps a purse, until a plow scattered them. In Germany, a detectorist near Cologne stopped after 15 silver coins and called archaeologists<\/a> in much the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The analysis was published in 2025 by David Wigg-Wolf of the Romano-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute, with David Weis, INRA’s deputy director, and Lynn Stoffel of INRA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 141 solidi were struck between 364 and 395 or 402. Trier, an imperial residence about 28 miles (45 kilometers) away, supplied 38 of the 139 standard coins in the authors’ table. Antioch, now in southern Turkey, supplied 33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there is Nicomedia, a mint on the Sea of Marmara. Seventeen coins came from there, all from 364 to 367. The hoard “is remarkable for the numerous coins of 364-367 from the mint of Nicomedia on the coast of the Sea of Marmara in northwest Anatolia, for which there is no parallel in the CHRE dataset,” the authors write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CHRE is the Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire database at Oxford, which documents about 19,000 hoards. In comparable regional finds listed there, Nicomedia accounts for 3.4 percent of the solidi. At Holzthum it is 12.2 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valentinian I was proclaimed emperor at Ancyra, modern Ankara, in 364 and then moved to Italy and Gaul. “Coins of the period from eastern mints will have arrived in the area with Valentinian I and his army,” the study says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The youngest coins are two solidi of Honorius from Sirmium, dated 394-395, and one Milan coin of a type made from 394 to 402. The authors put the closing date at “probably 395 or soon thereafter,” which marks only the earliest possible moment of burial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The authors do not tie the burial to any one event. “There are no specific historical situations or events with which the deposition and non-recovery of the Holzthum hoard can be directly connected,” the authors write, adding that the region “was stable into the early-fifth century.” That puts Holzthum with other Roman treasures someone hid and never came back for<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two broken coins are plated, a base core under a gold skin, and one “is most likely an imitation.” Coin No. 27 “has a dark sheen, and does not seem to be of fine gold, but perhaps has a high silver or tin content,” though no metal analysis had been done. Copies turn up elsewhere too, like the two ancient forgeries among Roman silver coins on Gotland<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team cannot be sure it has every coin. Fighting and farm work probably disturbed the site, so “it is by no means certain that the original hoard was recovered in its totality,” they write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The full study was published in Schweizer M\u00fcnzbl\u00e4tter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: C. Nosbusch \/ INRA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two amateur archaeologists prospecting a plowed field near Holzthum, a village in northern Luxembourg, set off a find that ended … <\/p>\nSeventeen coins came from a mint in today’s Turkey<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Nobody knows who buried the gold or why<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Two plated coins and one with a dark sheen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n