THE CONTENTS OF A FIFTH-CENTURY PURSE

At first glance, it looked like little more than a compact lump of earth, corroded metal and mineralized textile. But inside a fifth-century grave at Oudenburg, Belgium, archaeologists found something far more revealing: a purse that may preserve the moment when Roman money stopped being enough.

The burial, known as Grave A-104, was discovered in the 1960s in one of the late Roman cemeteries linked to the coastal fort of Oudenburg. Now, a new reassessment of the assemblage suggests that the small objects once carried in the purse could help explain how people in northwestern Europe adapted after bronze coinage ceased arriving around A.D. 400.

The find is not a treasure in the usual sense. There are no glittering gold coins, no silver hoard, no ceremonial vessel placed for display. Instead, the purse held at least three, and possibly four, bronze coins, fragments of copper-alloy objects, flints, an iron fire striker and other small pieces of metal. To modern eyes, some of it might look like scrap. To someone living at the edge of the Roman world in the early fifth century, it may have been useful, portable value.

The grave is dated after A.D. 388, based on the latest coin in the purse, an AE4 bronze coin of Valentinian II minted at Arles between A.D. 388 and 402. Other grave goods suggest the burial most likely belongs between the late fourth century and around A.D. 430.

The purse itself appears to have been attached to the belt, rather than placed separately as a symbolic offering. That detail matters. It suggests the contents were not necessarily selected only for the funeral. They may represent things the man, or the people who prepared his body, already regarded as useful possessions.

The coin group is one of the most intriguing elements of the discovery. Alongside the late fourth-century Valentinian coin were much older Roman coins: a Trajanic dupondius from around A.D. 98–117, a Trajanic sestertius from around A.D. 107–110, and a Hadrianic sestertius minted in A.D. 138.

That means coins more than 250 years old ended up in a purse used during the twilight of Roman administration in northern Gaul.

The purse also contained Hackbronze, a term used for intentionally fragmented base-metal objects. These were not decorative scraps waiting to be repaired. The fragments included parts of brooches, belt fittings and other copper-alloy objects that had lost their original function. Many were broken beyond practical restoration.

This is where the Oudenburg purse becomes especially important. Around A.D. 400, base metal coinage stopped reaching the northwestern Roman provinces in regular supply. Gold and silver remained part of the official monetary system, but they were too valuable for small everyday transactions. People still needed to buy, sell, compensate, exchange and negotiate daily value. If small bronze coins no longer circulated reliably, what replaced them?

The Oudenburg assemblage may offer one answer. Broken bronze, old coins and small metal fragments could have entered a flexible economy in which value depended less on official coin denominations and more on material weight.

To read the complete article, see:
A 1,600-Year-Old Purse Found in a Roman Fort in Belgium May Reveal How People Paid After Rome's Money Ran Out (https://arkeonews.net/a-1600-year-old-purse-found-in-a-roman-fort-in-belgium-may-reveal-how-people-paid-after-romes-money-ran-out/)

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