DOMINO NOSTRO

I recently got a pretty cool little lot of 5th & 6th C AE coins from an auction. Mostly, I was after some Thrasamund Vict.s & nice monograms, but there was a "Cross in wreath" in with them that I had my fingers crossed about. Couldn't quite make out the legend from the listing pic, but I just couldn't make it be "DNTHEODOSIUS..." Anyway, I lucked out & it's one of the enigmatic DOMINO NOSTRO AE4s; an anepigraph potent cross in wreath Re. Now, my trusty copy of RIC X tentatively assigns the series to Boniface and gives an admittedly brief but convincing argument for doing so. Even if that bet gets hedged a little. But other places I look say that that attribution is no longer accepted, assigning the series to the Vandals under Gaiseric or maybe Huneric & cite G. Bijovsky. She comes recommended, so I've read what I can find with a lean towards accepting her dating. However, there doesn't seem to be much written about the D.N. series (Anywhere. At least that I can find. If anyone knows anything good, clue me in, please & thanks) & what there is, isn't backed-up by much. Not by the fault of any of the authors, but simply because there aren't very many of these coins.
So, with my cool new coin stuck hanging in attribution-limbo, I'm hoping for some help from better numismatic minds than mine. What is the thinking with these coins as to who issued them & when? And why? Am I missing something to the argument to assign these to Gaiseric? I know there's no answers or consensus, but I can't find anything about why they're now thought to be Vandal.
Personally, Boniface seems a more likely contender. Everything from the style of the Ob bust & the Camp-Gate/Victory/Cross/etc. on the Re to the lettering screams very late-4th/early-5th c. The basic fabric of the flans on which the D.N series coins are stuck also, to me, seems Imperial. Vandal Nummi of King Gaiseric or Huneric; & I'm going with the imitative Vict. Adv. L. W/wr & Palm in the name of Honorius types here; are usually struck on thinner, less-regular flans. In my limited experience, at least. And I've never seen a small Vandal AE with relief as bold & as high as the D.N. coins. Even the nicer larger denomination "municipal" bronze struck at Carthage under Gaiseric & Huneric are still rather different, stylistically, from the D.N. coins. It's a pretty thin argument, I know, & I'm not too attached to it, but they just don't look like Vandal coins to me and I'm wondering what others think.
So, what does everyone think? Who issued this series? What do you think of the arguments laid out by Kent in RIC or by Bijovsky or others? Anyone have any other ideas? And please, if you have an example, could you post a pic? Thank you.
Oh, and probably a good bit of what I've written is riddled with errors, despite my best efforts, so feel free to correct away as needed & don't rely on any of it without first verifying.
1.4 g
11 mm

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

For those that don't know what extremley rare issue this is

Image courtesy of CNG

 

Do you have the specific citation for Bijovsky? Many of her papers are available at https://antiquities.academia.edu/GabrielaIngridBijovsky.

 

Better pictures would be great.

 

I do not. Tesorillo, for instance, just cites the name. Yeah, I've looked through acedemia.edu but without a title I'm just flipping through a bunch of papers. King of hoping someone else does know; that's what I'm looking for with this

 

I am very bad at photographing coins & this one is giving me extra trouble. I'll try some more, but that was the best I got after a lot trying. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the listing pic from where I purchased it, but I think it's possible to view lots from their closed auctions; Roma Numismatics, E-sale 90, Lot1703, ended 11/18/21, if that helps

 

Not my area but here is a comparison with David's example.

 

Wow, congrats on lucking into this rare and interesting type at such an awesome price!!

Sadly I'm no expert on these, but I tend to agree with your comments on the fabric and quality of these coins compared to the typical Vandal junk you see. I'd add (just making explicit something you implied) that the better quality Vandal stuff you mention, like the 4 nummi municipal issue just below, is from a century later. Presumably there are hoard reasons to date the D.N. issues to the early 5th century?



Contrasting early 5th century Vandal:


^ this one's overstruck on an official SALVS REIPVBLICAE.

Later fifth century (I think), adapted from a VOTA type:

 

I don't think that the coin was issued by Gaiseric. Under Gaiseric and Huneric, the Vandals only copied Roman siliquae and 1/2-siliquae in the name of Honorius. It would be strange in my view to imitate Roman silver coins and issue their own bronze coins.

 

I know, the above imitations get regularly attributed to the Vandals, but I think it is unlikely that they were made under the authority of a Vandalic king or other authority of the Vandalic kingdom.

I think it was Grierson and Blackburn who pointed out that these are essentially "anonymous African imitations" (I think often from Libya), that could have been made by anyone and anywhere in northern Africa. Grierson and Blackburn (MEC I) don't include them in the Vandalic series, which I think is the correct thing to do.

These imitations basically don't fit anywhere into the rather well organised royal and municipal Vandalic series, which consisted of a whole range of silver and bronze denominations down to single nummus pieces.

In a sense they don't even fit in with the pseudo-imperial series from AD 440 to c. AD 485, which consisted of very consistent imitations of Siliquae and 1/2-Siliquae from Ravenna.

 

Under Gaiseric & Huneric, Carthage was also striking 21 & 42 nummi pieces in AE as well. I have a 21 N coin minted under Huneric, I'll post a pic in a bit. They're marked "XLII", "NXI", etc.

 

That is a good point. In bronze, Carthage was only striking larger denominations at the time. "Small change" coins like these were apparently in short enough supply that the unofficial coins we refer to as Vandal now account for the majority of "Vandal" coins found. Gives the impression Carthage wasn't even trying to mint any that early.

 

The 'Vandals' attribution for the broad class of imitations stems from a loose reading of Wroth's catalogue, published more than 100 years ago. There he attributes a class of tiny bronze imitations from parcels in the BM collection having known African, Sicilian and Italian provenance to the 'Vandalic Period' (if I remember correctly), not necessarily to an official Vandal mint. Part of the problem today is the trade. "Vandals" sells better than "contemporary imitation".

 

Yes exactly true. I think many of these tiny and typically ugly copper imitations are practically unsellable if they were not attributed to the Vandals.

Here is a selection of Vandalic coins from my collection:

Early pseudo-imperial: King Gaiseric



Late pseudo-imperial: possibly King Huneric



Royal series: King Guthamund (extremely rare 100 nummi)




Royal series: King Thrasasmund


Royal series: King Hilderic




Royal series: King Gelimer

 

Even from the pictures as they are, this specimen is certainly a DOMINO AE4. As to who minted this series, the unlikely legend could point to a period of uncertainty in Africa, which considering the style, I think fits with ca. 423-425. How involved was really Bonifatius in the minting of these minute petty coins I think is very hard to say.

 

I found what I was looking for with a reasoning for assigning these to the time of Vandal's rule of Carthage instead of Imperial. It seems I'm rocking a lot of outdated & incorrect assumptions about the dating of Vandal AE & that's coloring my confusion. Less sure then ever, but at least I know what to read now. That is what I love about all of these terrible little coins though, how little is really known about them. Especially the little imitative pieces that probably aren't even Vandal (can we go back to calling them "barbarous"? or something?). They're still 1,500 yr old coins with just as much to tell us about their time as any other ancient coin; more, even, since they're so poorly understood. Makes the, uh, ...creative ways they're often described when sold extra annoying. Horrible as they are, I love the things for what they are. I honestly think that eventually we'll have them organized, to a degree. Stylistic similarities run through a lot of them. Maybe/probably we'll never know who, specifically, struck which ones. But organizing them into sets that were at least each likely struck by the same tribe, whoever it was, by stylistic details &/or the types being imitated &/or etc I think is doable.

 

Please do share the reading material.

 

Of course, sorry, I should have.
It was sent to me as a pdf from Acedemia.edu, I'm not sure if it's ok to post the pdf here, but it should be free to view there. The title is:
Minting in Vandal North Africa: coins
of the Vandal period in the Coin
Cabinet of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches
Museum
By:
Guido M Berndt
Roland Steinacher

Nice summary of theories on the dating of Vandal AE.

 

I think even the idea that "tribes" struck these coins is highly flawed. It again implies, that Germanic (or Moorish?) tribes were at work here, which is unlikely to be the case.

Instead, it is most likely that Roman citizens in some provincial towns produced theses coins to facilitate petty trade. These coins were likely made to alleviate small change shortages that occurred repeatedly in history. Britain was plagued by it as late as the 18th century, when private people started to make coins to resolve the problem.

The Vandals (and Alans) who came to Africa in 429 represented a warrior society. They had no interest in trade whatsoever. They were interested in the silver issuances, which generated seignorage revenue for the royal coffers, but left the issuance of bronze to the city magistrates.

Here are a 42 and a 21-nummi piece, minted at the end of Vandal rule by the city authorities of Carthage.

 

In acsearch I found the following coins with variants of the DOMINO NOSTRO legend. I was not aware that different reverse types existed.

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3734657


https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6271264



https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3319972



https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=313076



The last one is interesting. The reverse was continued by late Vandalic coins. Here is 2-nummi piece from my collection, which probably belongs to the reign of Hilderic (I think on some pieces his name is legible):




Maybe the DOMINO NOSTRO coins were minted by the municipal authority of Carthage at a time, when they didn't want to use the name of the Roman emperor, who was at war with the Vandals and when the Vandalic kings were not yet issuing a royal copper coinage. I would propose a dating of the series to the period from around AD 440 to AD 460, if we want to link them to the later Vandalic coins. However, a pre-Vandalic origin is just as likely. We will probably never know.

PS: As can be seen above, linking these coins to Bonifacius was certainly been highly profitable, even if these links are unproven.