Early imperial Roman denarii found in Central Europe, north of the Sudetes and the Carpathian Mountains

From the territory of Central Europe that lies north of the Sudetes and the Carpathians, occupied during the Roman Period by the Przeworsk and the Wielbark cultures, we currently have a record of only a very small number of Roman Imperial denarii issued before AD 64. The interpretation of these finds is hindered by the small size of this database and the lack of archaeological context. There are three possibilities; one of them is that these coins, or at least some of them, entered the region as a complement of a ‘Republican’ wave of infl ux, which contained a signifi cant amount of Roman Republican denarii. The second possibility is that the Early Imperial denarii passed into the Central European Barbaricum during the second century as a small admixture to a great wave of denarii struck after AD 64. The third option is that we ought to view the influx of the Early Imperial coins as an independent and a minor occurrence not related directly either to the ‘Republican’ or the ‘second-century’ wave. The view held by the author of this article is that the influx of the bulk of pre-AD 64 Imperial denarii is best explained by the first hypothesis.