Uxentum — modern Ugento, in the heel of Italy — was a Messapian settlement that produced a limited autonomous bronze coinage during the late second and early first centuries BC, just as Roman administrative pressure was steadily eroding the monetary independence of allied Italian communities. This issue falls squarely in the period leading toward the Social War of 91–87 BC, after which virtually all allied coinage ceased as the Italian peoples absorbed Roman citizenship and Rome's monetary system absorbed theirs.
The Messapian alphabet appears on coins of this series, one of the last epigraphic witnesses to a language that would be extinct within a generation.
Uxentum — modern Ugento, in the heel of Italy — was a Messapian settlement that produced a limited autonomous bronze coinage during the late second and early first centuries BC, just as Roman administrative pressure was steadily eroding the monetary independence of allied Italian communities. This issue falls squarely in the period leading toward the Social War of 91–87 BC, after which virtually all allied coinage ceased as the Italian peoples absorbed Roman citizenship and Rome's monetary system absorbed theirs.
The Messapian alphabet appears on coins of this series, one of the last epigraphic witnesses to a language that would be extinct within a generation.