The Roman Coin Hoard Discovered On A Remote Sicilian Island

The trove of almost 30 Roman denarii, stashed away inside a wall and under a boulder, stands as an exciting find

Heavy rain on the island of Pantelleria recently caused a piece of earthen wall to slide off, revealing an ancient hiding place and a hoard of 27 silver denarii minted between 94 and 78 B.C.E.

The coins were discovered during a larger cleaning and restoration project of the Acropolis of Santa Teresa and San Marco on Pantelleria.

Archaeologist Thomas Schäfer of the University of Tübingen, who led the project, explained that some of the coins were exposed after heavy rains caused the earthen wall in which they were hidden to deteriorate, while others were found beneath a boulder. The coins were minted in Rome, and have been dated to between 94 and 74 B.C.E.

“There were frequent raids against the villages along the coast and it is easy to imagine that someone hid the nest egg when the ships arrived, without being able to recover it,” the government statement notes.

Over the years, archaeologists have made a number of remarkable finds on Pantelleria.

“We have been excavating for twenty-five years now in San Marco,” Schäfer said in the statement, “it is a wonderful site, fortunately intact, it has never been touched over the centuries.”

The acropolis on Pantelleria even includes a “comitium,” a place where elected representatives and Roman cavalry officers would have once gathered. These, Schäfer noted, are extremely rare.

“There are only five in all of Italy and this is the one in the best conditions,” he said.

In recent years, archaeologists also made another stunning find on the island: three marble heads of significant Romans. These included Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor Titus, and a woman who may have been Agrippa the Elder, a granddaughter of Augustus, or Antonia the younger, a daughter of Mark Antony. The busts were found near the coin hoards.

These coins, meanwhile, are just the latest in a series of similar artifacts discovered throughout the region in recent months, including the trove unearthed in Claterna, the hoard found in Sardinia, and the cache uncovered in Livorno.

According to Francesco Paolo Scarpinato, the councilor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, the coins found on Pantelleria add to the island’s rich archaeological heritage.

“This discovery,” he remarked, “in addition to the intrinsic value linked to the finds, offers precious information for the reconstruction of events, commercial contacts and political relations that marked the Mediterranean in the Republican age.”