1 Denarius Pellets, circle

The Taman Peninsula, ancient Tmutarakan, sat at the junction of the Black and Azov Seas — a transit point between the steppe world and Greek colonial remnants. The Gothic presence there in the late third and early fourth centuries produced a coinage that borrowed heavily from degraded Roman billon prototypes, reflecting access to Roman monetary forms without Roman institutional control. These issues are poorly documented and attribution remains contested among specialists.

The pellet-and-circle ornamentation is a degeneration marker, appearing as Roman prototype legends became illegible to local die-cutters and were replaced with geometric filler.