Ancient Trade Route Survey Yields Coins
An archaeological survey along an ancient trade route in Poland uncovers a treasure trove of historical coins, shedding light on the region’s rich past.
What is today Poland was a long journey from the boundaries of the ancient Roman Empire, but even then, the people inhabiting the region were in contact with the Romans. Between 400 B.C. and about A.D. 500, the area was populated by Avars, Balts, Celts, Germanic tribes, Scythians, Slavs, and Thracians. Much of the Roman trade with Poland involved Baltic amber, and the region was known as the Amber Road, a major trade route between the Baltic and Mediterranean Sea.
Because of this trade route, members of the Polish Association of Searchers, known as the Hussars or Husaria in Polish, were surveying the region to identify a historic trade route dating from Roman times. Hussar members Sławomir and Szymon Milewscy knew they might encounter ancient coins, but they didn’t anticipate finding a hoard of coins dating from the Thirty Years War (1618–1648).
The Thirty Years War was one of the most ruinous battles in European history. The war was a religious conflict that began when recently elected Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II attempted to force Roman Catholicism on western and central Europe, violating the 1555 Peace of Augsburg agreement. There were four major phases to the war: the Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention. More than eight million people died from famine, disease, and military battles. The war ended in 1648 via the Treaty of Westphalia, an agreement that allowed each independent state to choose its own religious beliefs and is today considered to be the foundation document for the modern state system.
Poland became embroiled in the Polish-Swedish War (1626–1629) during the Swedish intervention period and is known in Polish and Lithuanian history as The Deluge. Sweden invaded again in the Second Northern War of 1655–1660, this war following the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648.
Polish and Swedish forces fought each other in nearby Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki in 1655. The village of Pomiechówek, near where the hoard was recently discovered, is on the Wkra River in east-central Poland, about 21 miles northwest of Warsaw in the Masovian Voivodeship.
The find consists of 17 silver thalers and patagons, some of which date between 1604 and 1641 and originated from Brandenburg, Saxony, the Spanish Netherlands, and Tyrol. The find also included a rare 1630 thaler of Sigismund III Vasa from the Toruń Mint in Poland and a rare 1623 thaler of John II of Palatinate-Zweibrucken. Overall, the coins show a cross-section of the contemporary political and economic landscape of Thirty Years War Europe.
Piotr Duda is an archaeologist with the Triglav Association, the group that studied the find. Duda told Polskie Radio, “This is probably one of the largest treasures of this type discovered in Poland, especially in the Mazovia region. The rarity and condition of the coins add indescribable historical value beyond their estimated half-million-zloty material worth.”
The Swedes and the Poles each employed primarily German mercenaries during the war. One theory is that someone involved in the Thirty Years’ War who later took part in the 1655 battle may have hidden the coin hoard, or a wealthy merchant may have buried the coins to protect them from theft. Plans are to conserve the coins at the Mazovian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments and to display them at the September Campaign Museum and the Modlin Fortress.
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