AUGSBURG, GERMANY—Live Science reports that more than 5,500 silver coins were unearthed in an old riverbed in southern Germany by Sebastian Gairhos of the Archaeological Service of the City of Augsburg. The coins are denarii minted in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries A.D., according to Stefan Krmnicek of the University of Tübingen. “The place of hiding was probably washed away many centuries later by a flood of the Wertach River, scattering the coins in the river gravel,” Krmnicek said. He thinks the hoard was buried in the early third century, and that the location was likely chosen because it was near the city of Augusta Vindelicum, the capital of the Roman province of Raetia, and the Via Claudia Augusta. “We do not yet know why the hoard was deposited,” Krmnicek concluded. For more on the archaeology of Roman Germany, go to “The Road Almost Taken.”
