Tetradrachm Zweigarm Type

The "Zweigarm" types — named for the branching, arm-like reverse motifs that distinguish them from Macedonian prototype coinage — emerged from Celtic workshops somewhere in the middle Danube basin, almost certainly copying Philip II tetradrachms that flooded the region through mercenary payments and trade. Pinning a specific tribe to these issues remains genuinely contested; the Kostial and Göbl classifications organize them typologically, not ethnographically.

Celtic die-cutters progressively abstracted the Macedonian prototypes across generations of copying, each workshop interpreting the previous generation's coins rather than the originals.