Ravenna's bronze coinage of this period occupies an awkward administrative moment: the city had passed from Odoacer to Theoderic's Ostrogoths in 493, and these small issues were struck during the Gothic War, when Justinian's reconquest was actively dismantling Ostrogothic authority across Italy. The mint continued operating under shifting military control, producing coins whose attribution to civic versus imperial authority remains contested — hence the absence of a MEC I number.
Metlich's sequencing places this type firmly within the final Ostrogothic phase before Narses closed the Italian campaign in 554.
Ravenna's bronze coinage of this period occupies an awkward administrative moment: the city had passed from Odoacer to Theoderic's Ostrogoths in 493, and these small issues were struck during the Gothic War, when Justinian's reconquest was actively dismantling Ostrogothic authority across Italy. The mint continued operating under shifting military control, producing coins whose attribution to civic versus imperial authority remains contested — hence the absence of a MEC I number.
Metlich's sequencing places this type firmly within the final Ostrogothic phase before Narses closed the Italian campaign in 554.