14. 5. 2017 Woman discovers 11th century coins while cutting down forest

A ceramic vessel with 1,341 silver denarii from the time of the rulers Břetislav I and Spytihnev II was discovered four years ago by a woman in the woods near the village of Řeteč near the border of the South Bohemia and Central Bohemia regions. The coins were about ten centimetres underground.

The treasure was taken over by experts from the Prácheň Museum in Písek. According to the head of the local archaeological department, this is one of the largest coin finds in the Czech Republic from that period. The museum waited to announce the discovery of the depot until treasure hunters started to arrive at the site.

Archaeologists wanted to explore the site first. This suggests that the coins were hidden in an area outside the contemporary settlements," archaeologist Tomas Hiltscher said at the time.

The depot weighed a total of over 1,300 grams and according to the archaeologists, the coins were of the so-called small calibre. These coins appear after the coinage reform of Břetislav I around 1050 and were produced until 1217. They were denarii with a size of sixteen millimetres and a weight of under one gram.

Towards the end of the mintage, the purity of the metal dropped significantly. The description included the name of the ruler, ending with the word dux. The names of the places where the coin was made are also usually written there. Later, however, the names of mints disappear and are replaced by the names of saints and patrons.

Experts from the Prácheny Museum had to be really careful when cleaning the coins so as not to lose valuable information leading to the identification of individual mints.

"We spent several days dismantling the find with tweezers and documented the position of each individual coin within the ceramic bottle. In the end, the treasure contained a total of 1,341 coins of the Czech rulers Břetislav I and Spytihnev II, weighing less than one and a half kilograms," described archaeologist Martin Pták.

Photo gallery: 1341 denarii

The treasure was hidden by someone during the last phase of the reign of Prince Spytihnev II or shortly after his death. This means sometime in the eleventh century. Two thirds of the coins found date from the reign of Spytihnev II, the rest from the time of Prince Břetislav. The coins were in good condition.

Sources: www.denik.cz, www.casopisbarbar.cz, www.propamatky.cz
Photo: Prácheň Museum in Písek