New monetary findings in Roman tombs of the Southern necropolis of Tharros (2014 excavation campaign)

Loss of evidence due to methods used during earliest excavations, undertaken without looking at the coin in the context of burial, has had significant impact on the study of coin finds from funerary contexts. Thanks to a new approach, the 2014 excavations carried out in the Punic and Roman necropolis of Tharros – Capo San Marco (Oristano, Sardegna) have provided fresh data allowing to investigate the function of the coin and the associated ritual practice. This work focuses on two numismatic finds dated from the Roman Imperial period retrieved from two N-S oriented “a cassone” tombs containing inhumations. The coins were placed in the graves and near the corpses, yet in different positions, suggesting ideological significance and symbolic meanings that this article will try to identify. Despite unfavourable conditions of preservation of the graves, the excavation of some intact archaeological strata allowed us to observe that in one case a coin was placed by the left side of the deceased, perhaps near the hand, while in the other grave it was placed by the feet. A bone hairpin found in the first tomb points to the burial of a female individual. Both burials belonged to an area of the necropolis of Capo San Marco in use between the first and the 3rd c. CE.