This contribution presents a tight body of evidence – hoards of medieval coins found during archaeological investigations in churches in a confined area of southern Albania in close proximity to Phoinike – whose formations and abandonments date to within a decade or so of one another in the central years of the fourteenth century. A detailed numismatic analysis of the represented coin issues, principally deniers tournois of Arta and soldini of Venice, and of the hoards themselves, allows the authors to draw monetary and historical conclusions. One of the hoards defines in a decisive manner the pattern of coin production at Arta for about a decade after 1323. The presented evidence highlights the administration and the commerce of the territory, and its geo-strategic fate in the face of serious pressures which came to bear on it from all sides during the 1330s and 1340s. The main protagonists in this story are the lords and despots in Epiros of the house of Kephallenia, Zakynthos, Leukas, and Ithaka; the Angevins of southern Italy who had important holdings in the area, especially the island of Kerkyra; and the Byzantine and Serbian empires which took control respectively in the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth century.
Baker et al. (Fri,) studied this question.