Documente inedite din arhiva vieneză despre un tezaur cu monede KOSON descoperit la începutul secolului al XIX-lea în Munții Șureanu
UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS FROM THE VIENNESE ARCHIVE CONCERNING A TREASURY OF KOSON COINS DISCOVERED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY IN THE ŞUREANU MOUNTAINS

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to present, through the prism of some unpublished documents from the Viennese archive, new data about the hoards discovered in the Șureanu Mountains at the beginning of the 19th century. Most of the documents refer to a discovery made by four inhabitants of the village Vâlcelele Bune (Hunedoara County, Romania) in the spring of 1803, concerning 400 Kosons. From the documents related to the 1803 hoard, we know the identity of the discoverers and the amount approved to be paid to them by the Mint of Alba Iulia as compensation. We can also see the application of official procedure from the attached document (explicatio) regarding this type of coins. The legal aspects linked with these types of discoveries were established by an imperial decree. Regarding the Kosons discovered in 1803, I present the data offered by the archive in connection to already known data, such as the testimony of an eyewitness published in the 1880s. Thus, we were able to show there are some differences between sources. The 280 Greek coins were discovered at Kis Miklos and later handed over to the Mint of Alba Iulia. Among these documents there is a contemporary copy about another hoard of Greek coins also discovered in the Șureanu Mountains in 1802, of which 280 coins reached the Alba Iulia Mint. Based on the information existing in the recent literature on the different types of stamps with which the Kosons were imprinted, we were able to determine the stamp of the coin after which the two casts were made. This aspect is a particularly important one, but we cannot be sure if all the coins which arrived at the Mint of Alba Iulia were cast with this stamp or whether the officials just selected one of this type.

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