Imagine the thrill of unearthing buried treasure in your own backyard! That’s exactly what happened to a German family when their ordinary swimming pool excavation turned into an extraordinary discovery of medieval silver coins. This find has been hailed as “the biggest treasure since 1949 in the region of Freiburg” by Live Science.
Claus Völker, who was digging a trench for his new pool’s piping in Glottertal, noticed “small metal plates”. The area around Freiburg was once the center of one of Germany’s biggest silver industries. Curiosity piqued, Völker and his wife began finding more and more of these small “plates”, leading them to halt their digging and contact the local council.
The council sent three certified metal detectives who discovered 1,000 silver coins dating back to the 14th century. Despite a local deluge turning the excavation area into a muddy mess for days, the detectives returned and were rewarded with an additional 600 coins. “You could have bought about 150 sheep with the coins,” said participating archaeologist Andreas Haasis-Berner.
The coins are mainly from the mints of Breisach, Zofingen, and Freiburg, minted around 1320 CE, along with a few coins from Basel, St. Gallen, Zurich, Laufenburg, and Colmar, according to Haasis-Berner in a translated statement.
The evaluation of this coin hoard will hopefully shed light on the history and development of minting in Breisgau—an area once a part of Freiburg, and controlled by the houses of Zähringen and Urach. These Middle Ages dynasties controlled Glotteral when the minting activity in this area of the Black Forest was booming. A hoard of 5,000 silver coins was found in Breisgau in the 1940s, but until now, no coins had been found here.
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Source: Good News Network
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