CRISTIAN GĂZDAC               FRANZ HUMER

LIVING BY THE COINS

ROMAN LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF COIN
FINDS AND ARCHAEOLOGY
WITHIN A RESIDENTIAL QUARTER
OF CARNUNTUM

ARCHÄOLOGISCHER PARK CARNUNTUM. NEUE FORSCHUNGEN 8

Cristian Găzdac and Franz Humer:
Living By The Coins.
Roman Life in the Light of Coin Finds and Archaeology within a Residential Quarter of Carnuntum.
Wien: HOLLITZER Wissenschaftsverlag, 2013

Copy-editing: Paul Delavos, Alison Dunlop (Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, Wien)
Layout: Barbara Ebeling
Cover photo: www.kovacs-images.com

© HOLLITZER Wissenschaftsverlag, Wien 2013

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ISBN 978-3-99012-092-7 hbk
ISBN 978-3-99012-093-4 pdf
ISBN 978-3-99012-094-1 e-pub

CONTENTS

Introduction

Carnuntum – the Reborn City of Emperors

Numismatic Comments

Abbreviations and Bibliography

Technical Abbreviations

Photo credits

Tables

Graphs

Maps

Catalogues

North Street

South Street

East Street

West Street

Portico

Baths

“Valetudinarium?”

Building east of the “valetudinarium?”

Villa urbana

House I

House II

House III

House IV

House V

Former information centre – today the restaurant Forum Culinarium

Stray finds

Plates

INTRODUCTION

After a forty-year gap following the excavations of the 1950s (and even earlier), large archaeological campaigns have been carried out since the 1990s in a quarter (also known as “Spaziergarten”, “insula VI” and “Open-Air Museum”) of the former “civilian” Roman town of Carnuntum. These new excavations have produced a large quantity of coins.

Some of these findings have been published in the monumental volume Numismata Carnuntina – FMRÖ III.2 together with the rest of the coins found at Carnuntum in older collections.

The new excavations were carried out according to new methodologies, as nowadays it is a desideratum to create numismatic corpora that should gather as much information as possible about each coin, not only from a numismatic point of view but also from an archaeological one. The aim is to provide more details about both general and specific patterns of the Roman economy, society and history of a residential quarter in a Roman town.

Thus, the style of publication of coins – with a large scale of archaeological units (e.g. Roman streets, dwellings public edifices) and their stratigraphy – was chosen in this book in order to provide as much information as possible about each coin; in doing so we try to provide scholars with material and evidence that may help them to obtain a realistic picture of monetary circulation. Similarly, the coin as seen through an archaeological context may serve for a better understanding of the dating of archaeological phases, especially to illustrate when the coin may be useful within an archaeological context, as well as to highlight the pitfalls that one may come across if this artefact is misunderstood within the archaeological picture.

We hope that this book will be a useful tool for numismatists, archaeologists, historians and any reader interested in understanding Roman life through coinage.

It would not have been possible to publish such a large amount of numismatic evidence and work without the tremendous, accurate and difficult work carried out over last decades by our colleagues and friends in the field of archaeology to whom we express our gratitude: Christoph Baier, Claudia Behling, Jasmine Cencic, Dagmar Fuchs, Ágnes Alföldy-Găzdac, Nicole Fuchshuber, Armgart Geiger, Andreas Konecny, Dominik Maschek, Matthias Pacher, Beatrix Petznek, Silvia Radbauer, Alexandra Rauchenwald, Barbara Stark, Barbara Weißmann and Ulrike Zeger.

The restoration work was carried out by János Papp (National Museum of Budapest, Hungary) and Kathrin Schmied (University of Vienna, Austria) to whom we also express our gratitude here.

We also want to thank to over seventy Romanian students from the University of ClujNapoca, Romania and eighty seasonal workers, whose efficient work has played an important part in providing us with numismatic material and archaeological information.

We would like to thank the friendly and helpful staff of the Archaeological Park Carnuntum Company and Museum Carnuntinum of the Government of Lower Austria where this book was written.

We are indebted to our colleagues and friends from the managerial department of the POSDRU programme (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) for their generous help concerning the logistics provided while this book was a work in progress.

We are grateful to the GERDA HENKEL Foundation, which has granted one of the authors a fellowship to conduct research whose results have also benefited this book.

CARNUNTUM – THE REBORN CITY OF EMPERORS

The historical region between the two closest European capital cities (Vienna, Austria, and Bratislava, Slovakia) is the largest archaeological landscape in Central and South-Eastern Europe. In the towns known today as Bad Deutsch-Altenburg and Petronell-Carnuntum (fig. 1) lie the remains of the Roman provincial capital Carnuntum (CSAAK = Colonia Septimia Aurelia Antoniniana Karnuntum).

Fig. 1. Map of the archaeological landscape of Carnuntum. The shaded area shows the extension of the ancient city (2008)

1. A brief history of the site

The first Roman presence in what is now Lower Austria is connected with the grand scheme of Augustan expansion that planned to create the province of Germania. At the turn of the new era, there was a relatively peaceful situation in Central Europe following the integration of the Pannonian and Dalmatian regions into the province Illyricum and the annexation (without force) of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum. Rome’s attempt to crown the policy of border fortification in the mid-Danube region and along the Elbe by including the Marcomanni, however, resulted in an uprising in the year AD 6. This is known as the‹ so-called Pannonian-Dalmatian uprising, which destabilised Roman rule in today’s Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia, and the Empire was forced to show tremendous military strength. (see map 1)

Despite the impressive strength of the Roman troops, it took three years before the rebels surrendered; however, the armed struggles in Pannonia meant that the Emperor’s plan to conquer the Marcomanni by a projected “war on two fronts”, from the west and from the south, eventually failed. The first mention of Carnuntum as a Celtic town appeared in connection with these military conflicts.¹ The exact location of the oldest Roman Carnuntum is still a matter of debate, despite intensive research conducted over the past few years. The most recent excavations on the Braunsberg in Hainburg (Austria), on the Thebener Kogel near Devin (Slovakia), as well as the large number of Celtic coin finds within the city limits of Bratislava (Slovakia) seem to indicate that the Celtic Carnuntum was located somewhere in the area north of the Danube, presumably within Bratislava territory.² Thus the Danube and the Rhine formed a natural border of the Empire, a border which remained for the following centuries. During the 1st century AD, the northern border was secured with watchtowers and smaller camps situated at regular intervals. The region east of Vienna together with western Hungary became the province of Pannonia at the latest under Emperor Claudius I (AD 41–54). (see map 1)

Fig. 2. The area of the legionary fort Carnuntum (2000)

The archaeological finds indicate that the legio XV Apollinaris erected the first fortified camp on the south bank of the Danube around AD 40 (fig. 2).³ The Carnuntum legionary fortress is the only military camp between Regensburg and Belgrade on which no constructions were built between the Middle Ages and modern times. This makes this camp one of the most important archaeological sites on the Danube limes.⁴

Fig. 3. Remains of Roman bridgehead fortifications on the Danube at Stopfenreuth, near Carnuntum (1993)

In addition to the legion in the legionary fortress, a cavalry camp was established in Petronell and bridgehead fortifications were constructed (fig. 3) to guard the Danube bridge in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg.⁵ Although the province Pannonia Superior was located strategically, owing to its position on the insecure mid-Danube limes, it required a massive number of troops. At the end of the 1st century AD, four legions (out of thirty legions throughout the whole Empire) were garrisoned in Pannonia: at Vindobona, Carnuntum, Brigetio and Aquincum. From AD 106 the legio XIV Gemina Martia Victrix was camped at Carnuntum.

Fig. 4. Archaeological landscape of Bad Deutsch-Altenburg (2003)

Fig. 5. Virtual reconstruction of the legionary fort and the the canabae legionis in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg (2006)

The reasons for the fast development of the camp and the civilian settlement in Carnuntum were of a military nature – the military camp located at a high position on the Altenburg Plateau on the south bank of the Danube could easily control the Marchfeld region north of the Danube (fig. 4, 5). Thus Carnuntum played a key role in protecting the fortified Roman border in the mid-Danube region. In addition, the city was located at the junction of two ancient European trade routes: the Danube as a waterway together with the accompanying towpath flowing from west to east and the Amber Road from the Baltic to Italy.⁶

When the province was divided into Upper Pannonia (Pannonia Superior) and Lower Pannonia (Pannonia Inferior) between AD 103 and AD 107, Carnuntum became the capital of Upper Pannonia and thus the seat of the provincial governor. Aquincum (nowadays Budapest) became the capital of Lower Pannonia.

Fig. 6. Inscription from an amphitheatre naming municipium Aelium Karnuntum

Around AD 124, Emperor Hadrian, the former provincial governor of Lower Pannonia, raised Carnuntum to the status of a Roman municipality (municipium Aelium Carnuntum).⁷

The first period of glory under Emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius came to a sudden end during Marcus Aurelius’ reign due to the outbreak of the Marcomannic wars. In AD 170, Carnuntum became the strategic centre for reprisals under Emperor Marcus Aurelius who spent three years here, AD 171–173. During this time he wrote several philosophical works, including parts of his famous Meditations in Greek. There is some evidence that he wrote the second book of this work while he was in Carnuntum (the book ends: “τ ν Kαρνoντ” = “this [was written] in Carnuntum”).⁸ The reliefs on the Marcus Aurelius column in Rome may show some details of the ancient Carnuntum at this time (fig. 7).