A critical review of the signs on Visigothic slates: challenging the Roman numerals premise

ABSTRACT Slates from the Visigothic era that have appeared in certain areas of the Iberian Peninsula have aroused considerable academic interest. One of the liveliest and still open debates concerns the significance of a series of signs engraved on these slates. Their identification with the Roman numbering system is currently the most widely accepted hypothesis, to the extent that it has become more or less taken for granted and has shaped theories about the function and dating of numeral slates. The present study questions the validity of this premise by undertaking a comparative diachronic analysis of the signs I, X, and V on the slates relative to those used in Roman numbering. I propose a new reading of these signs as not straightforwardly Roman, but rather as the result of local innovations relating to the cultural and economic needs of the communities in which this numerical system is present.