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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 8024354, member: 128351"]One has to be very cautious when drawing conclusions from the number of coin finds. In the 5th c. imperial mints produced much less coins than in the 4th c., and these coins were only tiny AE4 or minimi that are very difficult to identify, and their statistics consider only "identified coins of the 5th century". In many archaeological sites of the area bronze coins are found so corroded that any identification of the smaller denominations seems desperate... In the Macellum of Jerash they identified 335 coins of the 4th c. (down to 408), only 61 coins of the 5th c., and 679 illegible ones datable of the 4th or 5th century !  But there are also 10 Vandalic coins and 1 Axumite of the 5th c. Jerash is not the only site in the area where Vandalic and Axumite coins have been found. in Petra, some have been reported... It is more likely that 4th c. coins, that had been minted in enormous quantities, were still circulating in the 5th c. and even later. New coins of emperors such as  Marcian or Zeno were not provided in sufficient quantities, so people used also foreign coins acceptable as small change, like Vandalic coinage from North Africa or Axumite coinage from Ethiopia.[/QUOTE]