Beyond Charon’s Obol: Coin and Coin-Like Depositions in Funerary Assemblages at Parion from the Classical to the Roman Period
Beyond Charon’s Obol: Coin and Coin-Like Depositions in Funerary Assemblages at Parion from the Classical to the Roman Period

Summary/Abstract: This article examines funerary monetary deposition in 75 documented contexts from the South/Tavşandere Necropolis of Parion, dated from the Late Classical/Early Hellenistic to the Roman Imperial period. The dataset is analysed at context level and distinguishes ordinary struck coins, coin-like objects, and modified monetary deposits, while keeping coin issue date separate from grave/context date. The evidence is dominated by in-mouth bronze coins, but the corpus also includes multi-coin mouth and near-mouth deposits, indeterminate micro-locations, gold coin-impression foils, a dolphin-shaped cast object, and foil-gilded bronze coins. The study argues that Charon’s obol remains a useful interpretation only where object category, placement, burial mode, and archaeological association support it. Parion thus offers a well-documented corpus for examining how coins, coin images, and transformed monetary forms entered funerary practice.

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