Medieval gold coin unearthed in ruined fortress in Bulgaria may depict Byzantine emperor

A gold coin unearthed at the site of a medieval fortress in Bulgaria indicates the wealth of the people who lived there during the early years of Ottoman Turkish rule, according to archaeologists.

A team from the Rousse Regional Museum of History found the coin earlier this year during excavations at the village of Cherven, near the Danube river and Bulgaria's northern border with Romania. It appears to be from the Byzantine Empire, and other coins like it are sometimes attributed to John III Doukas Vatatzes, who was the emperor of Nicaea — a Byzantine successor state — from 1222 until 1254.

The coin shows two figures on one side, one of whom is dressed in the distinctive robes of a Byzantine emperor.

But Svetlana Velikova, an archaeologist at the museum who is leading the excavations, told Live Science that such coins were also minted by the Latin Empire, a state founded by a Crusader army that sacked and occupied the imperial city of Constantinople — now Istanbul — in 1204.

Velikova said that recent studies had suggested that, rather than disrupting the known coinage, the Latin Empire's rulers chose to mint imitations of Byzantine coins, until Constantinople was reconquered in 1261. The 13th-century-styled coin was also much lighter than it should have been — about three-quarters its original weight — which indicated it had been resized in accordance with 14th-century standards for the region's gold coins, she said.

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These details, along with its location, suggest the coin may date to the first years after Cherven was conquered by the Ottomans in 1388, Velikova said.