The ancient West Balts came into contact,
directly and indirectly, with the advanced material culture and foreign
concepts of imperial Rome during the period known as the Old Iron Age (A D
1-400) in Lithuanian archaeology. Roman traders and their middlemen
arrived to procure natural drift amber, an exotic material that would be
transformed in the workshops of Aquileia into items much desired by the
fashionable ladies of Italy: finger rings, necklaces and amulet pendants,
ornately carved scent bottles and other miniature vessels, mirror-backs,
and intricate figurines of deities, theater performers, and cupids riding
dolphins and horses (Strong 1966).[1] This trade contact, some
archaeologists believe, greatly stimulated the cultural evolution of
Baltic society. They term it a “golden age” that saw trade embassies
from Rome, and by the early third century cargo ships from the Frisian
port of Fectio (near Utrecht, Netherlands) anchor off the Baltic
coastline, bringing in sacks of coins, metal tools and weapons, textiles,
household wares and personal ornaments to be exchanged for amber
(Michelbertas 1972, 1986; Jovaisa 1997, 1998). This allowed Balts to
acquire new metal and farming technologies, plants and livestock, which in
turn increased productivity and population and began to stratify Balt
society into nobles, farmers and slaves.
But is this an accurate reconstruction of
Roman contact and influence in the southeast Baltic, and is it consistent
with what we know about the simple level of Balt social and economic
organization at the time?
The largest excavated cemetery of the
second-third centuries, for example, Sargenai (Kaunas), has only 343
graves, equivalent to an associated community of 35-60 people; one of the
largest hill-forts, Ekete, Klaipeda district, is surmounted by a
settlement area that measures only 110 by 105m; and it was not until about
the first century that Balts learned how to produce iron from local swamp
ore (Michelbertas 1986: 18, 195, 207). Were the tribal Aestii [2]
of Sambia equal trading partners with the Romans or simply “natives”
dismissed with trinkets and beads?
In this study, we examine broad patterns in
the distribution of Roman imports across Barbaricum, as Romans
termed Europe north of the limes frontier, and then look at the
specific evidence of imports, particularly coins, among the West Balts.
Our interest lies in the amber trade[3] but we focus not so much on the
amount of amber used or exported, as on the type of payment left behind by
visiting traders. We hope to develop a regional model of the amber
suppliers in the southeast Baltic and their role in the amber export
system to the Roman world.
The terminal point of the amber route was
the Sambian peninsula (now the Kaliningrad district, Russia), where a
single night of westerwardly storms could wash up several thousand
kilograms of drift amber along its 80 km of shoreline. Much drift amber
could also be collected along the Vistula Spit of Poland, southwest of the
peninsula, and the long Curonian Spit (now divided by Russia and
Lithuania) which extends northeast of the peninsula. During the lst-3rd
centuries, five archaeologically-defined cultures (Nowakowski 1990: Fig.
1) surrounded the “supply zone” of amber: the Wielbark culture,
generally identified with Gothic tribes and controlling the lowermost
Vistula, the hybrid Bogaczwo culture in the Mazurian lakes district[4],
and three cultures that represented West Balts: the Sambian culture of
the peninsula, the Nemunas culture, and along the western
Lithuanian coast - the Stone Circle Grave culture. Possible first
contact between Romans and Balts is documented in Pliny's well known
account of the Roman eques [5] who journeyed during the time of
Nero from Carnunrum on the Danube to the southeast Baltic coast, and
returned to Rome with much amber (for a useful commentary see Michelbertas
1995).
The pioneering nature of this journey, as
noted by Wheeler (1954: 9), implies that the northern sectors of the amber
route, including the Balt region, had been up to this time inaccessible to
Roman merchants and the eques was attempting to regulate the entire
length of the network. The knight may have been evaluating the feasibility
of Roman military campaigns in the region, suggests Kolendo (1981). He
also proposes that Nero's interest in amber was in part political: he
wanted to impress the public with his ability to display enormous
quantities of an exotic luxury that decorated not only the safety nets of
his wooden amphitheater, but the armor of the gladiators.
Michelbertas (1995: 19) concludes that nine
Roman bronze winged fibulae (type A238m dated to AD 40-80 and 238r to
50-100) found in Lithuania represent artifacts brought in by Nero's knight
and provide evidence that he traveled the coast of Lithuania. It is true
that beyond the limes these fibulae are found only in Lithuania;
the Sambian peninsula; Wroclaw, Poland; and Pucheve, Slovakia (cf. Garbsch
1965). Yet, they are not found along the coast of Lithuania, as one would
expect, but are scattered inland across north-central Lithuania. One may
also question why the knight, after traveling some 800 km to purchase an
enormous amount of amber, apparently gave his Balt suppliers little more
than nine clothing fasteners, or “safety pins”. The Balt burials which
contain the winged fibulae are not notable for their wealth the richest is
at Sandrausickes, Raseiniai district and features an “eye series”
brooch, a bronze neck-ring, five bronze armbands and a socketed iron axe.
Roman Imports Across Barbaricum
Lotte Hedeager's excellent statistical
approach (1978) to major Roman imports north of the limes examined
the distribution of six types of objects - bronzes, glass, silver cups,
weapons, brooches and pottery - in 100 km intervals. The first four items,
all of high value, shared one type of distribution: they increased in
quantity as one moved north of the border, to about 600 km, and then
decreased (there was little difference between the east and west regions,
and the early and late empire). Pottery, on the other hand, was abundant
to only 200 km and then dropped off sharply. The pattern of brooches was a
special case: in the early period they have a rather high frequency to the
west from 200-400 km (along the Elbe) and to the east they increase
remarkably after 600 km, in northern Poland and the Sambian peninsula.
Hedeager (1978: 204) interprets brooches to be “commercially
insignificant parts of personal equipment”, which Germanic traders
brought back after being in direct contact with Romans in the south. She
concluded that Roman-Germanic trade north of the limes had two
economic systems. There existed a “buffer zone” out to 200 km which
maintained a limited money economy, perhaps including markets and a
merchant class. Further out, the more distant Germanic tribes had
moneyless markets or used money without a monetary economy.
That luxury goods were not common in the
buffer zone, but were concentrated at 400-700 km from the border,
suggested to Hedeager that societies in this region possessed strong
political and military power, and were aggressive middlemen in the
long-distance exchange routes. Several dozen “princely graves” of the
Lübsow type (Eggers 1949 / 50) are located in this 400-600 km interval.
They represent a first century elite network of local military leaders
whose burials emphasize elegant Roman drinking vessels. One such grave at
Lübsow, Pomerania includes from the Roman world a pair of fine
two-handled silver cups, a mirror-plate of white metal, a large bronze
basin, a bronze wine bucket, two bronze ladles, one bronze pitcher, two
glass bowls, bronze shears and tweezers; as well as locally produced items
- two drinking horns, four brooches (one of gold and silver), two silver
pins and bronze belt-fittings (Wheeler 1954: 43).
Additional evidence that Roman exports were
channeled into the hands of powerful middlemen, leaving little for the
primary suppliers at the end of the amber route, is found in the
distribution of denarii hoards found north of the limes, as
compiled by Lennart Lind (1981). The silver denarius was the “value”
coin in the imperial monetary system (together with the gold aureus,
rarely found north of the border) from the time of Augustus to about 238
when the antoninianus replaced it as the staple silver coin. Figure 1
shows the geographic distribution of 201 hoards, representing a total of
88,999 denarii.[6]
The differently sized find-spots on the map
reflect my categorization of the hoards into three types: small (those
with 20-50 denarii), medium (51-500) and large (501-6000). The value of a
small hoard represents roughly the monthly salary of a Roman legionary at
the end of the second century, while hoards of medium size reflect several
months of his pay and up to his entire yearly salary.[7] The hoards
classified as “large”, at the low end could have purchased several
suits of legionary armor plus arms (each 200-300 denarii, cf. Harl 1996:
223), and at the higher end, paid the required fee of one to two thousand
to become a member of the town council in Bithynia in the second century,
or bought a pound of the finest imported spun silk, dyed purple.[8] In
short, even the largest hoards shown in Fig. 1 do not represent very much
wealth by Roman standards.
We see that a dense clustering of large
hoards occurs along the upper Vistula and its tributaries, while another
“hot spot” of hoards is found downstream along the mid-to-lower
Vistula. Yet another high concentration is situated on the upper to middle
Oder. It is clear, then, that the largest concentration of denarii
deposits is closely associated with the primary amber route that began at
Carnuntum, led northward through the Carpathian Pass and over the Moravian
plains towards Kalisz and then the Vistula delta (alternatively, one could
have sailed down the Vistula most of the way - undoubtedly many “routes”
existed). A wide belt of middle-sized hoards also starts in southeast
Poland and crosses the Ukraine, following sections of the Dnieper and
other rivers. But the latter hoards do not necessarily indicate that
another amber trade started at the Dneiper, as they do not follow through
to the Baltic Sea: coin hoards along the Upper Nemunas and Daugava rivers
are very rare.
The near absence of denarii hoards within
the Sambian peninsula, and other Balt territory to the north and east, is
quite remarkable. Despite being the endsource of the amber supply, the
Baltic tribes were evidently not receiving a proportional share of silver
in payment for the amber that was being supplied to the Romans. Of course,
amber was not the only commodity exported south, but it was the most
precious one. This is an issue to which we will return.
The island of Gotland has a high density of
denarii hoards, but Lind (1976: 140; also see Fagerlie 1967: x) believes
that many of the very worn denarii there had been used in northern Poland,
perhaps for centuries, before they arrived to Gotland. In Denmark the
majority of denarii were deposited in the 4th century or later (Kromann
1993: 200). Scandinavian denarii therefore may not be relevant to our
discussion of 1th-3th century amber exchange.
Figure 2 dates the denarii hoards by terminus
post quem [9] and compares their distribution in two “regions”: 1)
those primarily found in Poland, representing the Carnuntum-Vistula amber
route, and 2) those located in the remaining areas of northern Europe. The
similarity between the two sets of histograms is astounding. I admit this
is a “macroview” that tends to wash out micropatterns, but it still
raises the possibility that the same conditions - whether economic,
political or military - which reduced the inflow of silver coinage along
the amber route, were also at work throughout the rest of barbarian
Europe. Up to about AD 138, we see that the inhabitants of northern Europe
had little reason to bury their silver coins for safekeeping.[10[ The
denarii buried during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61, ten hoards,
whose denarii comprise about 11% of the identified 87,076 denarii from
both histograms), Marcus Aurelius (161-80, twenty-nine hoards - 11%), and
Commodus (177-92, fifty hoards - 15%) each represent modest periods of
hoarding. We may also note that the denarii hoards in Poland from the time
of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (i.e. the dark bars in Fig. 2) represent a
smaller total than their counterparts outside of Poland. This goes against
the frequently proposed idea that the Marcomannic wars in 166-180 shut
down the trade routes in Poland.
It is during the reign of Septimius Severus
(193-211), or shortly after, that 48,258 denarii are buried in 84 hoards
throughout all of northern Europe - an amount that represents an
impressive 55% of the total coinage in Fig. 2. Even if circulation
increased somewhat during his reign,[11[ this does not explain the
enormous decrease in denarii hoarding that occurred throughout Barbaricum
during the reigns that immediately followed. Thirteen hoards dated to
Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander account for only
5,246 coins (6% of the total).
One explanation is Gresham's law, or “bad
money drives out good” - the principle in economics that when debased
lighter-weight silver coins go into circulation, the heavier-weight
full-value silver coins will tend tobe hoarded. Caracalla's introduction
in 215 of a new larger silver coin intended to pass as a double denarius
(the problem was that its weight was only one and a half times that of a
denarius) is described by Sutherland (1974: 218) as “the first great
overt act of depreciation in the currency of the Roman empire.” Both
Kunisz (1977: 15) and Wielowiejski (1970: 286) believe that barbarian
peoples refused to accept the new silver coins. The border communities, at
least, were capable of judging the fineness of silver coinage.[12]
Roman Coins in Balt Territory
We now turn to the bronze sestertii in the
graves of the West Balts, a distinctive case because bronze coins exported
north of the limes only rarely occur in quantity: along the 200 km
“buffer zone” and in distant north-central Europe (cf. Bolin 1926b:
186, 284; Bursche 1992a). Their concentration among the West Balts is an
unusual phenomenon connected with the amber trade. An early theory
(Bezzenberger 1904) proposed that Roman coins were imported by the Balts
primarily as raw supply for smelting. This has been refuted, although at
least a few coins did end up in the melting pot: fragments of a large
bronze coin (a 2nd century sestertius?) were found stuck to the side of a
primitive smelter at Narkunai in east Lithuania (Luchtanas 1981: 11 pav.).
And few coins were worn as pendants - coins with holes or special
attachments have been found only at five sites in Lithuania (Michelbertas
1972: 87). The majority (about 60%) of the more than 1,200 Roman coins
found in the territory of Lithuania represent ritual deposits in 150
graves. Based on this, Michelbertas (1964, 1995) has long held the view
that West Balts used Roman coins as money in their small economic
transactions.13 He believes the custom, practiced at 24 coastal cemeteries
during 180-260, of depositing a coin in a burial (usually a sestertius) to
pay Charon in the afterlife for the ferry ride to Hades, means the Balts
were familiar with money as a form of payment
But rituals undertaken in burial cults do
not necessarily reflect the real world. In my opinion, money did not have
much of a role in the barter economy of the Balts. First, only some 458
coins (38%) are known from 13 Lithuanian hoards, if we can regard these as
"economic" contexts14 (a possible bias here is that Lithuanian
archaeologists have excavated far more cemeteries than settlements).
Second, nearly all Roman coins (93%) found in Lithuania are of bronze
rather than of higher value silver. This implies the ancient Balts ignored
the rules of market economy: they preferred to receive (or were forced to
accept?) lower-value sestertii15 - large, glittering yellow coins, up to
about 3.5 cm in diameter, with highly visible portraits and other images -
apparently of talismanic value in their Charon cult. Third, coin
circulation is important to markets that use money, and the total of 1,200
coins seems very low if it was to meet the transactions of an entire
tribal population (one coin for every dozen people?). Fourth, if the West
Balts had developed a money-integrated economy during the second-third
centuries, why did it completely disappear with the retreat of Roman
coinage and fail to reemerge for another millennium?
It is precisely these factors - the
preference for large bronze coins, their predominant use in ritual
contexts, the scarcity of coins in “economic” contexts and the
relatively small total number of coins - that set the West Balts apart
from other regions of Barbaricum that may have had a more expanded
use of money in their markets. It reflects a unique cultural phenomenon:
the distant and peripheral Balts practicing the exotic Mediterranean
funerary cult of "paying the ferryman".
Figure 3 shows the distribution of 2nd-3rd
century Roman coins in west Lithuania. It is based on the same 166 coins
used by Michelbertas in his “use-span chart”,16 but in my histogram
the deposits are dated by terminus post quem. In Fig. 3 the coins
from Trajan and Hadrian have no visibility at all (in great contrast to
Michelbertas' chart) as they are subsumed in the bars representing later
rulers. The reign of Antoninus Pius also precedes the most active period
of coin deposition in west Lithuania. Instead, the histogram shows that
maximum hoarding took place during or slightly after the reigns of Marcus
Aurelius and Commodus. Decline in coin deposition is most strongly
associated with coins from Septimius Severus. In my opinion, this finding
does not support the idea (Michelbertas 1972; Bursche 1992a) that the
Marcomannic wars in 166-180 fatally disrupted the amber trade.17 Commodus
signed a treaty ceasing hostilities with the Marcomanni at the start of
his sole reign in 180, so there was no reason to have much war-related
hoarding along the amber route during his rule. In addition, if warfare
did force bronze hoarding at the very terminus of the amber route during
the time of Commodus, then why were silver coins not significantly hoarded
along the rest of the route, or elsewhere in Barbaricum, until the
reign of Septimius Severus (193-211) as indicated earlier by the Lind
denarii data in Fig. 2?
While the Marcomannic wars do not provide a
convincing explanation, neither, at this point, does the debasement of
bronze coinage. This is because reductions in coin weight began much later
with Maximinus (235-38). Philip (244-49) debased bronze denominations with
as much as 20 to 25 percent lead and by the reign of Gallienus (260-69)
the sestertius and the as disappeared as small change (Harl 1996:134-135).
The decline in sestertius inflow to the Balts of west Lithuania is thus
unresolved.
Another analysis of west Baltic coin
deposition is by Bursche (1992a and 1992b represent essentially the same
study). He uses a larger sample with more regional representation than
Fig. 3. It includes 1,766 sestertii found in eight hoards and 83 complex
burial finds (i.e. two or more coins per burial) from former East Prussia
and west Lithuania.18 I transformed the data presented by Bursche in his
Table 1 (1992a) into a terminus post quem histogram - see Figure 4.
At first glance, the Sambian-dominated distribution appears different from
that of west Lithuania in that the deposits dated by coins from Commodus
are overwhelmingly larger than those from all other rulers. A possible
explanation is that Fig. 3 is actually a sub-set of Fig. 4. In other
words, the latest coins from west Lithuania are generally earlier than
those from Sambia, and this makes sense statistically if they were being
obtained from the Sambian region. The opposite view - that the coins were
going from Lithuania to Samland - contradicts the process of population
sampling.19 The Commodus “peak” in Fig. 4 again suggests to me that
the Marcomannic wars - which ended by the beginning of the rule of
Commodus - were not the primary agent in disrupting the inflow of
sestertii to the west Balts.
A much different view is held by Bursche,
who resurrects an earlier theory that the Marcomannic wars caused a shift
in bronze coin inflow: it now arrived not from Rome but from the Rhineland
area using a sea route along the southern Baltic. This was earlier
suggested by Gaerte (1929: 207) and supported by Michelbertas (1972: 69,
1986: 216). Bursche believes the “roundabout route” lasted until about
259, when intensified attacks by Germanic tribes across the Rhine closed
it down. The trade then stagnated until the time of the Constantines, when
coinage again begins to reach the West Balts by the traditional Vistula
route (Bursche 1992a: 10).
Bursche's theory is interesting and
accompanied by a wealth of numismatic documentation. Much of the evidence,
however, that he provides for Rhineland origins is not entirely
convincing. He does not demonstrate that a break in imports actually
occurred in the Westbalt circle at the time of the Marcomannic wars. He
dismisses Godłowski's conclusion (1985: 346) that no such break is
present in the Sambian archaeological material, and that the inhibiting
role of the Marcomannic wars is a “scholarly legend”. Second, he
assumes that Danubian limesfalsa (contemporary counterfeits
produced during the mid-third century) necessarily had to have been
brought by traders traveling from Noricum and Pannonia Superior to the
west Balts. Yet, the limesfalsa at these two provinces represent
only some 19.4% of their post-Commodan AE (Bursche 1992b: note 42) - in my
view, not an overwhelming amount. Further, he also assumes that limesfalsa
have not been found in the west Balt area because they “would have been
noted by S. Bolin” and “they are not mentioned by M. Michelbertas
(1972) either” (Bursche 1992b: note 66). But do we really know that
either investigator was attempting to identify these coins? Third, are
Rhineland hoards at this time analogous, as Bursche claims (1992a: 8), to
those from the Westbalt circle? Their similarity, according to him, is
based on their very slight share of dupondii (2%) and their similar
proportions of autonomous emissions (10% in Rhineland and 7.5% among the
west Balts). It is known, however, that after Commodus and certainly by
the 240's the dupondius and the as had become rare (Burnett 1987: 58; Harl
1996: 90, 134), so the Rhineland and west Balt hoards merely reflect an
empire-wide trend. Bursche's estimate of the 10% provincial emissions in
Rhineland is based on a very small sample: four such coins among 35
post-Commodan sestertii in the Rheinhessen district (Bursche 1992b: note
48). I venture to guess that much different percentages could be obtained
by sampling other districts. Bursche himself (1992b: 236) implies this:
“large amounts of autonomous coins were also recovered here [Rhineland]
usually linked to movements of troops”.
Locations of Mints
Let us broaden our discussion to include all
Roman coins (AE, AR and AU) found in the whole of ancient Balt territory
and attempt to identify where some were struck. Figure 5 shows the
location of mints throughout the Roman empire whose products have been
found at Baltic sites, and Table 1 provides a tabulation. In general, the
mints listed in the table that operated from the first century to about
the mid-third century represent autonomous provincial mints[20]; the later
mints are from a network of imperial branch mints that began to be
established during the co-reign of Valerian and Gallienus (253-60) and
continued to expand throughout the third century. Provincial coinage died
out early in the west, during the first years of Claudius (41-54) and was
totally replaced by imperial coinage. In the eastern provinces, however,
local coinages continued to flourish for 250 years. The number of
provincial mints grew gradually, reaching a peak during the reigns of
Commodus (177-92) and Septimius Severus (193-211) when some 350 mints
issued coins (Harl 1996: Fig. 5.1).
Table 1 shows that with the exception of a
single coin from Trajan there are no provincial coins found in Balt
territory that were struck by 1st or 2nd century emperors. This supports
the idea that the majority of bronze coins found in Balt territory struck
during the first two centuries after Christ came from the senatorial mint
at Rome. While they do not have a mint mark, the coins are marked with the
initials S. C., standing for Senatus Consulto, or “by decree of
the Senate”. A small cautionary note: a large part of the coinage with
the mark S. C. was actually struck at a branch mint at Lugdunum, Gaul, at
least through Vespasian (78) and is recognizable by a small globe at the
point of the neck-truncation of the portrait bust (Sutherland 1974: 168).
Very fewAE from Augustus to Vespasian have been found in Balt territory,
and it is not clear if investigators have consistently looked for evidence
of the Lugdunum globe.]21]
By the time of Valerian and Gallienus a much
wider range of mints is established (Carson 1990). In addition to Antioch,
imperial branch mints producing substantial output were opened at
Viminacium (251), Lugdunum? (257), Milan (259), Siscia (262), and Cyzicus
(268). Massive quantities of debased coinage are produced, in particular,
the double denarius.
With a low value convenient for small
transactions the imperial coins become available to everyone, and between
255-275 nearly all provincial issues die out (Butcher 1988: 18-20). Table
1 shows that 32 coins, most of them provincials, have been found at Balt
sites, which were struck during the period 209-268 (many dated by t. p.
quem to no later than about 244). All are from the east: twenty-one
come from Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, while ten were minted
in Danubian / Balkan cities (see Fig. 5). This finding certainly does not
provide support for Bursche's proposal that at this time all imperial
bronze was arriving to Balt territory from the northwest, i.e. Rhineland.
The sudden burst of provincial coins, conspicuously absent among the Balts
for the first two centuries, is difficult to explain.[22] From the reign
of Gordian III, or later (i.e. the 240's-260's?), the central imperial
flow of coinage to the Balt area might have been interrupted by trade or
military movements with some connection to the eastern provinces. It is no
coincidence that this occurs during the deep crises - political, military
and financial - of the short-lived “military emperors” (235-270), and
a time when Valerian, the first emperor of Rome to be captured by enemy
forces in 260, was literally being used as a footstool by the Shah Shapur
in Mesopotamia.
Some 110 coins representing the
Constantinian dynasty and later rulers (306-455), have been found at
ancient Balt sites, mostly in former East Prussian territory (see Table
1). Gold coinage is prevalent. According to Burnett (1987: 115),
Constantine seized huge amounts of gold locked up in pagan temples, which
he liberated on his conversion to Christianity. The process continued with
his successors throughout the century and gold became relatively common.
Of the coins found in Balt territory whose mint can be identified, more
than two thirds were struck at two cities: at the new imperial mint (326)
at Constantinople, which soon established itself as the most important of
all late imperial mints, and at the Ravenna mint - founded early in the
fifth century when the city became the favored imperial residence of
Honorius. About a dozen coins come from the mints at Aquileia (which
struck fairly regularly from 294 to 425) and at Sirmium (open from 320 to
364, reopened in 379). Finally, one or two coins trickled in from
important regional mints at Milan, Thessalonica, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, [23]
Antioch, and Alexandria. Only one coin from Rome has been identified. Does
this mean that the amber route lost its direct linkage to Rome during the
late empire? The answer is not clear because the mint evidence, on
balance, suggests that the majority of identified 4th-5th century coins
came from cities located not far from the traditional amber route: from
Italy and the western Balkans (to Sirmium), while a minority are from the
eastern Balkans, Asia Minor, and the eastern Mediterranean.
Southeast Baltic Exchange Model
A comparison of Roman imports found among
the five cultures that surrounded the Sambian amber supply is useful in
developing a regional model (Fig. 6). The model assumes that the stream of
Roman goods flows from the central Danubian provinces, and not from the
Rhineland as suggested by Bursche.[24] By number, the most abundant Roman
manufactured item was the humble, mass-produced tiny glass and enamel
bead. They are present by the thousands, at least in the West Balt
cultures, usually in the burials of women and children.[23] In many cases
it is difficult for archaeologists to distinguish the early imported beads
from those later locally made. By mass, the most significant import was
probably bronze scrap metal, transformed by local smiths into an
impressive array of ornaments and tools that characterize the regional
cultures. The sources for bronze obtained by Balts, however, may have been
established more than a millennium earlier so it does not seem appropriate
to attribute bronze import exclusively to imperial Roman contact.
If we compare the distribution of Roman
imports by quality and luxury, the Wielbark culture ranks first, followed
by the Sambian and Bogaczwo cultures, with the two cultures in Lithuania
having the fewest such imports (cf. Nowakowski 1995; Simenas 1999:
78-101). Apart from small gold and silver ornaments (not tracked in this
study), imports of very high value are large ornamented bronze vessels.
They are numerous in the Wielbark culture, in contrast to the other
regions, each of which has only one or two bronzes. Terra sigallata red
ware and glass vessels also represent imported luxuries - both items are
present in the Wielbark, Sambian and Bogaczwo cultures, but are absent
from the two cultures in Lithuania. The Wielbark territory has the largest
hoards of silver coins in the region (Ossa-Rywałzik - 1000 (?) denarii,
Juszkowo - 700, Golub - 556), and substantial deposits are known from or
near the Bogaczwo culture (Dorothowo - 600 denarii, Zbójna > 200,
Szcytno - 200). By contrast, no silver hoard found in the Sambian, Nemunas
and Stone Circle Grave cultures is greater than a few dozen coins. The
rich imports characteristic of Wielbark society are in evidence at the
site of Weklice, near the Vistula delta, currently excavated by Jerzy
Okulicz-Kozaryn. Grave 208 (Okulicz-Kozaryn 1992: Ryc. 3-5) contained a
red gloss terra sigillata bowl with a rich molded design of human
and animal figures, a fluted bronze bowl (type E 44-49) dated to about
200-250, a ceramic skyphos cup in green glaze, a gilded silver-foil
medallion engraved with facing portraits of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius
Verus (c. 164-165), a pair of ornate silver armbands and bracelets, fine
brooches, tweezers, a belt buckle and other items.
The Balt (?) culture in the Mazurian area
featured rich graves during the C 1 period, and according to Simenas
(1998: 93) enjoyed much closer ties to the Vistula delta culture than to
the Sambians. One rare Roman import found at Sterlawky Maly is a silver
ring with a carnelian intaglio showing a boy milking a goat. A more
mundane import, but much more important, is found among the wealthy graves
at Szwajcaria - an iron turning share from an advanced type of Roman
plough (the Balts at this time were using wooden ards). Unfortunately, the
associated burial can not be precisely dated (Simenas 1998: 94).
The Sambian culture is notable for having
the most bronze coins in the region (about 2,087) with three-fourths of
them in hoards, but only 16 denarii have been found.[26] It enjoys the
curious distinction of also having the highest number (8) of Roman small
bronze bells, tintinnabula, which Nowakowski (1994) presumes were
used in magical practices. The West Balts on or near the Lithuanian coast,
as mentioned earlier, had the highest number of Roman winged profile
brooches, as well as about a thousand bronze coins, but very few denarii.
They also were importing from the Roman provinces indigo cloth or at least
indigo dye (Indigofera tinctoria) - an unusual discovery made by E.
Peceliunaite (1998) during her analysis of minute fragments of textiles
from the Lazdininkai, Paragaudis and Pajuostis cemeteries near the
Lithuanian coast.
The differential distribution of Roman
imports among the amber supplier cultures, and their variable access to
drift amber, suggests the existence of a regional hierarchy that
controlled the export of local amber (Fig. 6). The Wielbark culture was in
the best position for primary trading and profit: its boats could
sail directly to the Sambian peninsula to obtain, inexpensively, large
amounts of amber directly from the Sambians. Controlling the lower
Vistula, its fleet was able to sail upstream to intercept and barter with
fellow Germanic (?) middlemen from Carnuntum, making it unnecessary for
them to continue on to Sambia. The Bogaczwo culture could pursue a similar
course of action, but perhaps not as effectively. That large quantities of
amber were being placed in depots 100-300 km from the coast is verified by
the existence of amber processing centers in the Kujawy district, in
Wielkopolska, in western Mazowsze and in Małopolska (Wielowiejski 1994:
22). The Sambians, or the Aestii, while possessing tons of drift
amber at their doorstep, were faced with a distribution problem.
Linguistically and ethnically different from the Goths to the west and
southwest - separated by a “fear corridor” as some archaeologists put
it - it may have been difficult for Sambian traders to launch their own
trading expeditions southward. They were forced to engage in secondary
trading with Germanic middlemen and ended up with the less valuable
goods from Roman provinces. The West Balts along the Lithuanian coast and
the Nemunas river were in the worst position. Located beyond (i.e.
northeast of) the Sambian peninsula, they had little reason to expect that
traders seeking amber would come to them, while their own attempts to
journey south would be resisted effectively by their three neighbor
competitors. Consequently, they were forced to fall back on tertiary
trading with the Sambians and had to accept an even lower line of
Roman items: noluxuries such as glass or terra sigillata vessels,
perhaps one bronze vessel [27], bronze brooches and other ornaments,
bronze rather than silver coins, thousands of trinket beads, and some dyed
cloth.
The model helps explain Tacitus'
observation, cited earlier, that Aestii called amber glaes
in their own language (Tacitus used the latinized form glaesum).
This has long been a vexing linguistic problem: Why would Balt speakers
use a Germanic word (soon to mean “glass”, cf. Old English glaes)
rather than a variant of the East Baltic word for amber, gintaras?.
Either Tacitus was relying on German informants who had substituted their
own word, or, more likely, the Aestii had accepted a German loan
word because it was Germanic middlemen who were their portal into the
amber route and the distant Roman world to the south.
Explanations
1 The fashion for amber led to
affectations such as amber knives for cutting truffles, and Juvenal
(Sat. 9.50-3) satirizes the custom of ladies carrying balls of amber (to
warm the palm of the hand?). According to Pliny (Natural History 37.12),
Nero in his verses described his wife Poppaea 's ringlets of hair as
sucinii (meaning amber-colored, as sucinum was the latin noun for
amber). Pausanius (V. XII. 7) mentions a life-size statue of Augustus
made of amber (presumably a coating?) standing in a round building in
Olympia.
2 Tacitus writing in about 98 provides the
first description of the Aestii (pronounced like “ICE tea”) in his
Germania (45.5): “They explore the sea for amber, in their language
called glaesum, and are the only people who gather that curious
substance... [which] lay long neglected, till Roman luxury gave it a
name, and brought it into request. To the savages it is of no use. They
gather it in rude heaps, and offer it for sale without any form or
polish, wondering at the price they receive for it.” Archaeologists
can not define precisely the homeland of the Aestii, but most agree that
it was probably the Sambian peninsula, and perhaps Included the
Lithuanian coast as well (Nowakowski 1992: 226).
3 An earlier study (Sidrys 1994) discusses
why the West Balts, exporters of amber, used relatively small quantities
of amber for their own funerary display, and everyday ornamental use,
during the Old Iron Age and later.
4 This area may have been the homeland of
the poorly known Galindai and Sudivoi peoples (Balt tribes?) mentioned
by the second century geographer Ptolemy (cf. Nowakowski 1995). Kabelka
(1982: 28) incorrectly interprets the abbreviation “GAL” appearing
on obverse inscriptions of certain coins of Volusian (251-53) to mean
Galindikos or “(conqueror of) the Galindai”. In reality, Volusian
was using the agnomen of his father, Trebonianus Gallus, “(conqueror
of) Gaul”.
5 Having equestrian rank at the time of
Nero required a property qualification of 400,000 sestertii and was
second only to senatorial status. This eques was an agent of a certain
Julianus, Nero's manager of gladiatorial games, who, according to
Kolendo (1981), was actually Claudius Julianus, procurator and admiral
of the fleet at Misenum.
6 I used hoards of 20 coins or more from
Lind's catalogue. Hoards nos. 30, 211, 218, 251, 268, and 397 were
excluded as they are mixed with late imperial bronze. In general, mixed
hoards of imperial bronze and silver coins are rarely found as the two
were part of separate “systems” (Butcher 1988: 26). Also note that
Lind excluded some areas close to the limes border - such as Romania,
Netherlands north of the Rhine, and Austria north of the Danube -
because of their intimate ties with the Roman economy.
7Under Domitian (81-96) a soldier was paid
300 denarii every year and by Severus (193-211) his salary had increased
to 450 / 500 denarii per annum (Greene 1986: 59).
10Bithynia data, cf. Harl 1996: 261. Price
of silk fixed by Diocletian's Price Edict in 301 at 125 aurei,
equivalent to 3,100 denarius-like argentei (Harl 1996: 300).
9 That is, a group of coins found together
in a hoard or burial is dated by the latest coin or reign, because the
group could not have been buried until after the date of the latest coin
which it includes. The histogram represents the collective total from
each reign.
10 Mitkowa-Szubert (1989: 31) believes the
scarcity of issues before Nero in Polish hoards is due to Trajan's
monetary reform which removed some of them from imperial circulation.
11 Septimius Severus had a long reign of
18 years, he was generous in payments to the army - his dying advice to
his sons was “to enrich the army and despise everyone else” - and is
known for a profuse coinage: special issues were struck for a half dozen
members of the royal house. In addition, the total denarii shown in Fig.
2 for Severus includes 2,234 coins that were struck by his contemporary
rivals: Pertinax (actually a predecessor who reigned for only three
months in 193), Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger, and Clodius Albinus.
12 More than a century earlier, Tacitus
(Germania I. 5) records that Germanic peoples living “close to us”
preferred old fashioned Republican denarii minted with serrated edges to
demonstrate they did not have an interior of base metal. More distant
areas that were economically specialized - like the Kamienna valley in
south Poland with its iron production - may have used denarii regularly
in regional markets (Mitkowa-Szubert 1989: 27-31). At “downstream”
communities there also lived professional traders and the occasional
expatriate Roman negotiator who were well informed on the subtleties of
Roman coinage
13 His controversial view has diffused
into related academic fields, e.g. it is cited by the historian
Gudavicius (1999: 21) in his history of Lithuania.
14 I use coin data from Lithuania because
Michelbertas (1972, 1986:191) provides a thorough database. The hoard
total does not include those from Dargicke, Dirmeikiai and Klaipeda (as
their quantities are not known) and this would increase the hoard
percentage.
15 From the time of Augustus, bronze coins
suitable for everyday transactions were issued in four denominations:
the sestertius (worth 4 asses), the dupondius (2 asses), the as itself,
and the quadrans (a quarter of the as). Four sestertii were equivalent
to one denarius. Production of sestertii substantially increased from
Hadrian onwards, and during the second century the sestertius replaced
the as as the coin most commonly in daily use (Burnett 1987: 58).
16 Using a sample of 166 coins from “complex
finds”, i.e. two or more coins at a burial, at 46 burials from 13
cemeteries in Lithuania, Michelbertas plotted the spans of observed
co-occurences for each emperor in a horizontal bar-chart (1986: 83). By
counting multiple co-occurences within a complex find, however, he
greatly overstates the longevity and significance of coins from the
early empire that happen to be found together in a burial or hoard with
issues from later emperors. For example, he purports to show that coins
of Trajan were “used” in Lithuania during the period 100-225.
17 The Marcomanni, who inhabited Bohemia,
and their eastern neighbors the Qyadi were clients of Rome from the
first century, receiving subsidies and allowing Roman traders to settle
in their lands. At the start of hostilities in 166, the Quadi were
actually subdued with only a demonstration of force by the Roman army.
The Marcomanni however continued to engage Marcus Aurelius throughout
the rest of his reign.
18The eight hoards account for 1,555 coins
(88% of his sample). They are from three West Balt cultures: 1. from
Sambia-Kudrinka, Zhukovskoe, Morschanskoje, and Pavyzdziai -
representing a total of 1446 coins (82% of sample); 2. ex-Schakumehlen
and Skandawa in the Mazurian lakes district; and 3. Saulazoliai and
Algimantai in western Lithuania. In sum, his sample overwhelmingly
reflects the four Sambian hoards.
19A useful thesis for a future
dissertation is to continue the earlier work of Sture Bolin, Mykolas
Michelbertas, Vladislav Urtans and Alexander Bursche and compile a
comprehensive database, including new finds, of all Roman coins found in
the Balt culture sphere and then use it to test alternative models.
20 The difference between provincial and
imperial coinage is not always clear-cut, according to a study by
Butcher (1988:12). At one end of the spectrum were the official coins
struck by Roman imperial authorities for circulation in the western
provinces and for government expenditure and tax collection. On the
opposite end, coins mostly struck in the eastern provinces, primarily
bronze pieces, had a mark stating that they belong to the people of a
particular city and tended to circulate close to the city where they
were issued. But there also existed, in the middle, a wide range of
issues which sometimes had imperial sanction and sometimes did not, and
circulated over a fairly large region.
21 The reverse type of AE from Antioch
also bear the letters S. C. from the 1st into the 3rd century and was
presumably sanctioned by Roman authorities, but these issues are easily
recognized.
22 That it is connected to the “peak
period” of provincial mints under Caracalla, as suggested by Bursche
(1992a: 3) is not a satisfactory explanation, because local mints had,
been numerous under earlier emperors as well: Hadrian - 250 provincial
mints, Antoninus Pius - 290, Marcus Aurelius - 250, Commodus - 340,
Septlmius Severus - 380 (Harl 1996: Fig 5.1).
23 A small AE by Constantius II with a
mint mark from Cyzicus (SMKE, officina 5) and supposedly found at
Vecpils, Daugavpils district, Latvia is listed by Kropotkin (1961; 101,
no. 1468), but Urtāns (1977: 62) does not include it in his table.
24 If, following Bursche's theory, third
century Roman goods had arrived along a southern Baltic sea route, then
primary trading would have been with the Sambian culture, followed by
the Wielbark and western Lithuanian coastal cultures; secondary trading
with the Nemunas culture, and tertiary trading with the inland Bogaczwo
culture (in the poorest logistical position). Coastal settlements in
Latvia, Estonia and Finland would have actively bartered for Roman
goods. Roman historians would not have been ignorant about societies on
the eastern Baltic coast (Nowakowski 1992). This scenario, however, is
not consistent with archaeological and historical facts.
25 In 1986, Michelbertas (p. 102)
estimated that some 2,500 beads were known from 51 OIA cemeteries in all
of Lithuania. In an update, Mudenas (1997) counted 5,517 beads for
central Lithuania alone, for the period 50-400.
26 Sambian culture is represented by
former East Prussian counties of Eylau, Fischhausen, Freidland,
Heiligenbeil, Heilsberg, Königsberg, Labiau and Wehlau (cf. Bolin
1926a).
27 A fragment is known from Kurmaiciai,
gr. Nr. 7 (Michelbertas 1972: 24); a more impressive whole bronze
pitcher at Versvai, gr. Nr. 197 (304) is now thought to date to the last
half of the D period and may represent migration period plunder - E.
Jovaisa, per. comm.).
References
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