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The Latin colonia of Cosa was founded in 273 BCE and situated on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Central Italy. While the city has been studied extensively concerning its history and architecture, its socio-economic interactions with the surrounding region, including the full reach of its coinage that was minted at the colony until the mid-third century BCE, has not been overly explored. As a small facet of a larger project that examines regional socio-economic networks among cities in South Etruria during the Middle Republic, this paper presents preliminary findings on the circulation and potential function of coinage from coloniae and non-Roman cities in the region between the third and second centuries BCE. Since Cosa’s coins appear to have joined other Etruscan coins circulating within the region, it seems that the colony’s coinage was intended as a means of interacting with previously established exchange networks and existing trade routes.
