The Cotini were a Celtic-speaking people occupying the ore-rich highlands of what is now northern Slovakia and southern Poland, a location that gave them direct access to iron deposits — notably, they paid tribute in iron to both the Quadi and the Sarmatians, as Tacitus records. That same metallurgical environment also supported goldsmithing, and their staters belong to a regional coinage tradition heavily influenced by Macedonian prototypes that filtered northward over generations of trade and mercenary contact.
Attribution to the Cotini specifically, rather than neighboring groups, often rests on find-spot evidence concentrated in the Váh and Hron river valleys.
The Cotini were a Celtic-speaking people occupying the ore-rich highlands of what is now northern Slovakia and southern Poland, a location that gave them direct access to iron deposits — notably, they paid tribute in iron to both the Quadi and the Sarmatians, as Tacitus records. That same metallurgical environment also supported goldsmithing, and their staters belong to a regional coinage tradition heavily influenced by Macedonian prototypes that filtered northward over generations of trade and mercenary contact.
Attribution to the Cotini specifically, rather than neighboring groups, often rests on find-spot evidence concentrated in the Váh and Hron river valleys.