Byzantine coins depositions in children's graves (VI-VIII)

This study concerns children graves brought to light in different Italian contests and dated between VIth and VIIIth Century, that present a peculiarity: byzantine pierced coins next to child’s body. Considering these finds involves not only an archaeological and numismatic approach but also anthropologic and ethnologic ones which let us to understand if this kind of grave goods were simply offerings or, oppositely, objects belonged to the infant that also in Afterlife accompanied and kept company with him. Observing the five pierced coins, associated with a bronze stud in a Lombard little girl’s grave found in Verona, we can assume for certain they were reused as pendants of a jewel of which doesn’t remain no more the thread that passed through the hole, probably because it was constituted of perishable material; otherwise it is stiff to explain the pierce’s presence in correspondence to the flan’s border. The real function of this kind of poor-jewel, in the most part of the cases constituted from follis, is unknown, however it is difficult to discern if they belonged to the tradition of the crepundia, infant toys like whistles, ivory or bone dolls, masks, or to the tradition of tintinnabula, emotional and symbolic gifts, which parents gave to their children to protect them from evil spirits thanks to the presence of coins that, from classical Antiquity, had an apotropaic function related to their metal composition and round shape.