4 Sep 2017 Roudnice Coin Treasure

Four years ago, Miroslav Bartoš, a prospector with a metal detector, discovered the depot of 1310 coins together with two friends. The container with the money was buried in a field near Roudnice nad Labem. The coins date back to the 15th century.

The treasure contained pennies of various sizes. At first, the searcher with a metal detector Miroslav Bartoš came across three Meissen groszy lying on the surface. "After that, a detailed survey of the site followed, during which we managed to track down all the coins," said Bartoš, who searched the site with his two friends.

The treasure was located at a depth of about half a metre. The coins, green in colour from corrosion, were lying in the roof of a ceramic jug. It must have been broken during the plowing of the field. "The detector picked up a sound, I started digging a hole. Then I kicked again and the depot appeared. A few of the coins on the surface were green, and when the rest were taken out, the whole lot showed," Bartos recalled the day he found the biggest treasure of his life.

Medieval treasure from Roudnice

After more detailed research, experts discovered that the treasure contained transported phoenix embossments. However, there were also quite a large number of Prague groschen coins from the first half of the fifteenth century as well as Meissen or Bavarian coins. The last such find in Roudnice was made in 1878.

Who hid the treasure, of course, cannot be traced back. Given the type of coins found, it could have been family savings, for example. Archaeologists appreciated the way the searchers behaved. They discovered the coins in the evening and decided to dig them all up before reporting the discovery to the archaeologists. The coins were in danger of being damaged by farmers who were ploughing the fields.

"We were lucky that the field had not been ploughed yet, another plough pass could have uprooted the coins, scattered them in the ground or damaged them," Bartoš explained why they decided to dig up the depot first.

The treasure belongs to the Ústí nad Labem Region. The coins were conserved by the Podřipské Museum in Roudnice nad Labem and then examined by an expert in numismatics. Their restoration followed.

"I would like to highlight the approach of the finders, because we know that similar finds often end up abroad," said Martin Trefný, director and archaeologist of the Podřipské Museum.

He was really excited about the find, because the last time such a treasure was found in the vicinity of Roudnice nad Labem was in the already mentioned nineteenth century. It was the treasure of a rich Jewish burgher.

Sources: www.novinky.cz, www.denik.cz, www.rozhlas.cz