Dawid Maciejczuk, University of Wrocław, Institute of Archaeology
ORCID: 0000-0002-3044-0467
Krzysztof Jaworski, University of Wrocław, Institute of Archaeology
ORCID: 0000-0002-0445-6262
Votive Offering or Accidental Loss? Finds of Roman Coins in the Sudetes in the Context of Medicinal Springs: A Case Study of Recent Finds from Stare Rochowice (Bolków-Zdrój)
Abstract: In the spring of 2018, four Roman coins were discovered by amateur prospectors near Bolków, in the district of Jawor. Two of them (a bisected denarius of Trajan and a whole denarius of Antoninus Pius) were found in the immediate vicinity of a currently unexploited spring of healing water (alkalinesaline mineral water, referred to by balneologists as glauber water), known as the Saint Hedwig Spring. The spring was used until the 1940s in the small spa town of Bad-Wiesau (now Bolków-Zdrój, a hamlet of the village of Stare Rochowice). The discovery of Roman denarii in the vicinity of the medicinal water intake allows us to hypothesise that this spring may have been known and used as early as the Roman period. This may also be indirectly evidenced by a nearby Przeworsk culture settlement, located merely 150–200 m from the spring, investigated by archaeologists in 2002 and 2021–2022. The discovery of Roman coins in the vicinity of a healing spring in Stare Rochowice is not an isolated case in the Sudetes. In the past, in the 19th and early 20th century, Roman coins were discovered in several spa towns – in Przerzeczyn-Zdrój, Szczawno-Zdrój, Wolany near Polanica-Zdrój, and Radomice near Wleń. At the present stage of research, the find from Stare Rochowice can therefore be considered, very cautiously for the time being, as a manifestation of ancient symbolic practices, which had their parallels in both the Roman world and those areas of Barbaricum where this type of Roman cultural pattern reached.
Key words: Roman coins, mineral springs, Sudetes, Przeworsk culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52800/ajst.1.17.a6
Maciejczuk, D. and Jaworski, K. 2022. “Votive Offering or Accidental Loss? Finds of Roman Coins in the Sudetes in the Context of Medicinal Springs: A Case Study of Recent Finds from Stare Rochowice (Bolków-Zdrój)”, Notae Numismaticae – Zapiski Numizmatyczne 17: 145–158. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52800/ajst.1.17.a6
