10 Decimae Sethlans series

Populonia, the only Etruscan city-state known to have struck its own coinage directly from locally smelted ore, produced this bronze series at a time when its iron-smelting operations on the Campigliese coast and from Elba's deposits gave it both the raw material and the economic motive to mint independently. The city was already in Roman-allied decline by the second century, and bronze issues of this weight class likely circulated in a shrinking regional economy rather than any broader Mediterranean trade network.

Sethlans was the Etruscan equivalent of Hephaestus — the divine smith — an entirely appropriate patron deity for a mint whose wealth came from metalworking.