Archaeological Traces of Rural Coin Counterfeiting in Tolna County in the 16th–17th Centuries

“Hidden in dark forests, shifty characters with shady pasts were producing caps full of coins or Polish groschen from base metal in peasant cottages” (Komáromy 1893, 648). It is as if András Komáromy in his 1893 story for the journal Századok was describing the archaeological finds from Tolna County we will present below. The scene he portrays was of the difficult times following the Battle of Mohács, when even poor people tried their hand at the forbidden activity of counterfeiting. We can learn of the efforts of noblemen at counterfeiting from the work of Komáromy through the confession of a man (master Nicholas) accused of this activity. One of the most interesting parts of the science of numismatics is counterfeiting, because it is only a slight exaggeration that there have been fakes ever since the birth of money. Despite the distinctive nature of the topic, little is known of it even today. Knowledge is particularly scanty about so-called rural counterfeiting workshops, with few written sources – in contrast to those on counterfeiting by noblemen. In our paper we would like to provide some useful archaeological data primarily through surveys with metal detectors and field walks on a relatively small but intensively studied topic of the Ottoman Period.