Tetradrachm Zweigarm Type

The "Zweigarm" types — named for the forked or branching arm motif derived from degraded Macedonian prototypes — represent one of the more heavily abstracted Celtic reinterpretations of the Philip II tetradrachm coinage that flooded eastward following the Macedonian campaigns. Over roughly a century of imitative copying, Celtic die-cutters progressively dissolved the original Greek iconography into geometric and linear forms that bear almost no resemblance to their source material. Pinning a specific tribal attribution remains impossible; the distribution of findspots across the Carpathian basin suggests multiple workshops operating without central coordination.