São Julião da Barra (Oeiras). Numismatic study of the coins of the seventeen century kept at Direcção Geral do Património Cultural, Museu Nacional de Arqueologia and Museu de Marinha

Abstract

This paper presents a set of coins recovered during diving activities in front of São Julião da Barra (Oeiras) fortress and that are now deposited in Direcção Geral do Património, Museu Nacional de Arqueologia (National Museum of Archaeology) and Museu de Marinha (Marine Museum). From this set of 507 coins, the authors could classify 119 coins and only 25 of the classified coins are Portuguese. This set came from a shipwreck or most probably several shipwrecks that happened in Lisbon’s inlet mainly during the seventeenth century. The majority of the studied coins, both Portuguese and Spanish can be dated between 1620 and 1700. The Spanish set of coins most of it in silver, were coined in Bolivia (Potosi), Mexico (Mexico city) and Peru (Lima) has “reales de a ocho”, “de a cuatro”, “de a dos” and “de a uno” and its metrological study demonstrates that the silver valorization during Philip IV reign also applied in the colonial mints of Spanish America.