Bought this lot of Aes Signatum roman protomoney , these came after the Aes rude copper lumps , and circulated together with the Aes rude and the Aes grave (heavy)3rd Century BC first real roman coins. Due to their low weight , I would call them small change pocket money.
LOVE the proto-money...and I'm still 'in the market' for those and a aes grave or two. I bet @Alegandron and @rrdenarius will find them 'very interesting'!! Hmmm, for some reason that old 'Laugh In' show comes to mind
Those are cool, but I have not run across this style of Formatum. Nice. I have a couple... Oscan-Latin Aes Formatum shell 12.8g, 25mm Oscan-Latin Aes Formatum shell with Ribs 4th BCE approx 25mm, 15g ITALIA Aes Formatum AE Bronze Ax Head ca 5th-4th C BCE sextans size 44.8mm 56g This would be roughly the size of a SEXTANS against the Libral Pound
I always wonder: They must have had HUMONGOUS vending machines in Italia with these old Aes Grave and Aes Signatum coins that they used!
Hello I'm afraid that you would be ready to call protomoney any random fragment of some broken bronze item... I do not want to be rude, but one should still define where protomoney starts and where it ends, don't you think?
What are the dimensions of the objects in the third photo? They are remarkably identical to fragmentary vessel handles.
the large one is 50mm the small one 30mm , I bought them from CT member lazooro, he responded 2 messages above.
In the OP photos, the shell-shaped piece may very well be Italian proto-money, or aes formatum, but I have doubts regarding the rest.