Catalog
Tetradrachm Kinnlos Type
| Issuer | Dacians of Transylvania |
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| Year | 300 BC - 1 BC |
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| Currency | Drachm |
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| Obverse description | Stylized male head facing right, rendered in a highly abstracted Celtic-Dacian artistic idiom derived from the Macedonian tetradrachm prototype of Philip II. The effigy displays a wreath of schematized laurel leaves atop curling hair, reduced to bold, rounded pellet-like locks. The facial features are dramatically simplified, with a large circular eye in low relief, a broad nose, and a pronounced chinless (Kinnlos) profile — the defining characteristic of this emission type. No legend or inscription appears in the field. |
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| Reverse description | Highly schematized horseman and horse galloping to the left, derived from the reverse type of Macedonian tetradrachms of Philip II but radically abstracted into geometric and curvilinear forms characteristic of Dacian Celtic coinage. The horse's body is rendered as a large, smooth arc, with legs reduced to short, club-like projections. Above the horse, a rectangular arrangement of pellets represents the rider, accompanied by further scattered pellets and a diagonal line suggestive of a lance or staff. No legend or inscription is present in the field. |
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| Additional information |
The "Kinnlos" (chinless) designation comes from German-language scholarship — a morphological label applied to a specific degeneration sequence in Dacian imitative coinage, where successive die-cutting generations progressively abstracted the portrait until the jawline simply disappeared. These are not official issues in any administrative sense; they are tribal silver struck by communities in the Carpathian interior who had access to Macedonian tetradrachms — most likely Philip II or Thasos types — and reproduced them through a chain of imitation that accumulated error over decades.
Pink's classification remains the foundational reference, though the sequencing of sub-types continues to be debated as new finds emerge from Romanian hoards.