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A gold coin unearth at the site of a medieval fort in Bulgaria indicates the wealth of the people who lived there during the other years of Ottoman Turkish rule , according to archeologist .
A team from the Rousse Regional Museum of History base the coin earlier this year during mining at the hamlet of Cherven , near the Danube river and Bulgaria ’s northern margin with Romania . It is likely from theByzantine Empire , and other coins like it are sometimes attribute to John III Doukas Vatatzes , who was the emperor of Nicaea — a knotty successor state — from 1222 until 1254 .
The gold coin appears to be from the Byzantine Empire in the early 13th century, but archaeologists think the find may date from more than 100 years later.
The coin demo two shape on one side , one of whom is raiment in the classifiable robe of a convoluted Saturnia pavonia .
ButSvetlana Velikova , an archeologist at the museum who is leading the excavation , told Live Science that such coins were also strike by the Latin Empire , a land founded by a Crusader army that net and occupied the purple city ofConstantinople — now Istanbul — in 1204 .
Velikova say that recent discipline had suggested that , rather than disrupt the known coinage , the Latin Empire ’s rulers chose to mint imitation of tangled coin , until Constantinople was reconquered in 1261 . The 13th - century - styled coin was also much lighter than it should have been — about three - quarter its original system of weights — which indicate it had been resized in accord with fourteenth - C standard for the region ’s atomic number 79 coins , she said .
The gold coin and other artifacts were unearthed in the ruins of a fortified medieval town near the modern village of Cherven.(Image credit: Svetlana Velikova)
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These details , along with its locating , indicate the coin may go out to the first age after Cherven was conquered by the Ottomans in 1388 , Velikova said .
Fortress wall
Archaeologists have excavate around Cherven for more than a C , Velikova said . laying waste near the hamlet show it was an crucial town during the 2d Bulgarian Empire , which ruled from 1185 until the empire was all conquer by the Ottomans in 1396 .
Three other atomic number 79 coin of the same character were find nearby in 1975 , Velikova say , so it seems that local rulers had sometimes permitted the use of foreign coins , perhaps to make up for their own deficiency of Au .
The latest gold coin and other artefact — including arrowheads , jewelry and clayware fragments — were base during excavation along what had been a defensive wall on the western side of a medieval fortress at Cherven , she said .
Early excavations at the site indicate that the finds in this part of the medieval town date from soon after the 1388 conquest.(Image credit: Svetlana Velikova)
Until now , archeologist conceive the people who lived in the westerly part of the town were generally poor . But the newfangled finds suggest that at least some were wealthy , Velikova said .
Medieval empire
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The archaeological site near Cherven has been excavated over more than 100 years; the latest excavations are in an area that was part of a fortified wall.(Image credit: Svetlana Velikova)
The Second Bulgarian Empire was a major baron in the medieval Balkans and a challenger of the Byzantine Empire .
But both the Bulgarians and the Byzantines were also threaten by the Ottoman Empire , which already occupied many former knotty territories in the East .
Bulgaria remain an Ottoman territorial dominion for close to 500 geezerhood after it was inhibit in 1396 ; and the Ottomans went on to appropriate Constantinople in 1453 .
Archaeologists think that the new finds may date to the first years after the conquest of the medieval town by Ottoman Turkish armies in 1388.(Image credit: Svetlana Velikova)
