Asendorf coin treasure

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Jug made from Langerweher stoneware.

The Asendorf coin treasure is a deposit of around 4,500 late medieval coins from the Hanseatic region , which was found in 1962 during road construction in the municipality of Asendorf in the district of Harburg in Lower Saxony . Parts of the unusually extensive find are shown in the archaeological permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg in Hamburg-Harburg .

The coin hoard is not with the 1955 of the same name Asendorf the bruchhausen-vilsen in Lower Saxony Diepholz be confused, which contained about 6,300 coins from the 13th to 15th centuries.

Find

Schoolchildren and local residents searching for them on May 23, 1962.

The coin treasure was found on May 22nd, 1962 after sand was dug up at the farm of the farmer E. Schröder in Asendorf No. 8 for the straightening of the through-road towards Jesteburg and unloaded at the construction site. The chess master Erwin Saeger and Alfred Wischnewski discovered shards and a large number of green patinated coins in the sand . Saeger recognized the importance of their find and collected broken pieces and coins and handed them over to the teachers Hanke and Manglier at the local school. On May 23, Hanke reported the find to the Helms Museum. When visiting the site, the museum was given three guilders and around 3,000 silver coins . The original site had already been completely dredged and gave no more information about the storage location. During the search at the construction site, further, widely scattered silver coins were found. The search was supported by schoolchildren who also delivered more coins that they had found the day before. This search yielded 1,347 coins, including another gold coin . When sifting through the sand at the construction site on May 24th, 243 more coins were found. The museum acquired the find from the farmer Schröder, and the finders received the statutory finder's fee .

Findings

The Asendorf coin treasure was packed in a jug made of Langerweher stoneware , which was closed with a cut reading stone and then buried. The jug had broken into numerous pieces by the excavator shovel and could be almost completely reconstructed from the collected fragments. It is a bulbous, 29 cm high vessel with a curved profile and a wavy foot set off by finger impressions. Two handles are attached to the edge, which end at the shoulder. The disk-turned vessel body is made of yellow-brown glazed clay and has flat belt grooves on the outside. The vessel shoulder is decorated with two circumferential rows of flat triangular stamp impressions. The reading stone was ground so carefully that it fit exactly into the not quite round opening of the vessel.

The jug contained a total of around 4,500 coins, including four identical guilders from Lübeck . Witten made up the largest proportion of coins in terms of quantity , about a fifth were hollow pennies , along with a few sextuplets and triplets . The minting locations are spread across Greifswald , Hamburg , Lübeck, Lüneburg, Rostock and Wismar , further single coins were minted in Hanover , Oldesloe , Stralsund , in Friesland and Schleswig-Holstein .

interpretation

Based on the coin data, it is assumed that the Asendorf coin treasure was buried around 1400. Similar to the coin treasure of Luhdorf , the minting locations of the vast majority of coins lie in the geographical focus of the later Wendish Mint Association . As with the Luhdorfer Münzhort, only speculations can be made about the reasons for the burial of this coin treasure. It seems certain that he was brought to safety before the troubled times of the War of the Lüneburg Succession .

literature

  • Rüdiger Articus, Jochen Brandt, Elke Först, Yvonne Krause, Michael Merkel, Kathrin Mertens, Rainer-Maria Weiss: Archaeological Museum Hamburg, Helms-Museum: A tour through the ages (=  publications of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg Helms-Museum . No. 101 ). Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-931429-20-1 , pp. 163-165 .
  • Willi Wegewitz : Prehistory and Early History Department: Asendorf . In: Harburg Yearbook . No. 10 (1961/62) , 1962, ISSN  0722-6055 , pp. 135-153 , here pp. 147-149 .
  • Bagger unearthed a treasure trove of coins . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . May 24, 1962, p. 4 ( abendblatt.de [PDF]).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Topic Violence, Showcase No. 119.
  2. ^ Rüdiger Articus, Jochen Brandt, Elke Först, Yvonne Krause, Michael Merkel, Kathrin Mertens, Rainer-Maria Weiss: Archäologisches Museum Hamburg, Helms-Museum: A tour through the ages (=  publications of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg Helms-Museum . No. 101 ). Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-931429-20-1 , pp. 163-165 .
  3. ↑ The Asendorf coin find in the community of Asendorf (district of Diepholz) (accessed on November 17, 2012)
  4. ^ A b c Willi Wegewitz : Pre- and Early History Department: Asendorf . In: Harburg Yearbook . No. 10 (1961/62) , 1962, ISSN  0722-6055 , pp. 135-153 , here pp. 147-149 .