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Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards in Britain
Până la Roger Bland, Adrian Chadwick și Colin Haselgrove
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Începeți să citițiLungime: 1,006 pagini12 ore
- Editor:
- Oxbow Books
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- Jun 30, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781785708565
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Descriere
More coin hoards have been recorded from Roman Britain than from any other province of the Empire. This comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume provides a survey of over 3260 hoards of Iron Age and Roman coins found in England and Wales with a detailed analysis and discussion. Theories of hoarding and deposition and examined, national and regional patterns in the landscape settings of coin hoards presented, together with an analysis of those hoards whose findspots were surveyed and of those hoards found in archaeological excavations. It also includes an unprecedented examination of the containers in which coin hoards were buried and the objects found with them. The patterns of hoarding in Britain from the late 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD are discussed. The volume also provides a survey of Britain in the 3rd century AD, as a peak of over 700 hoards are known from the period from AD 253–296. This has been a particular focus of the project which has been a collaborative research venture between the University of Leicester and the British Museum funded by the AHRC. The aim has been to understand the reasons behind the burial and non-recovery of these finds. A comprehensive online database (https://finds.org.uk/database) underpins the project, which also undertook a comprehensive GIS analysis of all the hoards and field surveys of a sample of them.
Informații despre carte
Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards in Britain
Până la Roger Bland, Adrian Chadwick și Colin Haselgrove
Lungime: 1,006 pagini12 ore
Descriere
More coin hoards have been recorded from Roman Britain than from any other province of the Empire. This comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume provides a survey of over 3260 hoards of Iron Age and Roman coins found in England and Wales with a detailed analysis and discussion. Theories of hoarding and deposition and examined, national and regional patterns in the landscape settings of coin hoards presented, together with an analysis of those hoards whose findspots were surveyed and of those hoards found in archaeological excavations. It also includes an unprecedented examination of the containers in which coin hoards were buried and the objects found with them. The patterns of hoarding in Britain from the late 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD are discussed. The volume also provides a survey of Britain in the 3rd century AD, as a peak of over 700 hoards are known from the period from AD 253–296. This has been a particular focus of the project which has been a collaborative research venture between the University of Leicester and the British Museum funded by the AHRC. The aim has been to understand the reasons behind the burial and non-recovery of these finds. A comprehensive online database (https://finds.org.uk/database) underpins the project, which also undertook a comprehensive GIS analysis of all the hoards and field surveys of a sample of them.
- Editor:
- Oxbow Books
- Lansat:
- Jun 30, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781785708565
- Format:
- Carte
Despre autor
Roger Bland was President of the British Numismatic Society from 2011 to 2016. He retired from the British Museum in 2015, where he was Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory and Head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Before that he was curator of Roman coins at the Museum.
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Iron Age and Roman Coin Hoards in Britain - Roger Bland
2019
1
Introduction
The origins of the project
The research project Crisis or continuity: Hoarding in Iron Age and Roman Britain with special reference to the third century AD (hereafter IARCH) arose from debate surrounding the discovery in 2010 of a vast hoard of 52,503 Roman coins buried near Frome in Somerset (throughout this volume hoards are referred to by their number in our database: Frome I is IARCH-ED5662; Moorhead et al. 2010). This find was the most recent of a series of exceptionally large coin hoards dating to the late third century, others coming from Cunetio (Mildenhall), Wiltshire (54,951 coins, IARCH-43F4C9; Besly and Bland 1983), Normanby, Lincolnshire (47,912 coins, IARCH-1A9E14; Bland and Burnett 1988), Irchester, Northamptonshire (about 42,000 coins, IARCH-1E2065) and Blackmoor, Hampshire (29,788 coins, IARCH-140C71; Bland 1982). Although these hoards have been studied for their numismatic contents, the reasons behind their burial have seen little discussion. The opportunity to study the Frome I hoard in situ gave a more nuanced picture of the circumstances surrounding its deposition than the traditional numismatic narrative of late third-century hoards reflecting turbulent conditions at this period. The hoard had been buried in a large pottery vessel in an isolated location and was evidently added to after its interment – factors that might suggest a ritual deposit rather than an emergency concealment (Moorhead et al. 2010).
Alongside this intriguing discovery, several other factors contributed to making a comprehensive new study of coin hoarding both desirable and timely. Although the Frome I hoard was found a mere ten years after Robertson’s (2000) corpus of Roman coin hoards from Britain was published, most of the analysis for that work was carried out much earlier, and there had been many new discoveries by the time it appeared, and at the time of writing some 50 new hoards of Roman and Iron Age coins are discovered each year (see Chapter 9). As a result, by the 2000s, the number of new hoards was making it increasingly difficult for the British Museum to keep up to date with publication. A key purpose of the IARCH project was to create a digital database of known coin hoards and repository for earlier reports, which could then be added to and updated in the future.
The IARCH project has provided a much-needed opportunity to reassess this large corpus of coin hoards from a broader perspective, taking advantage of the mass of archival material held by the British Museum. The relative inaccessibility of hoard findspot data to researchers, in part due to the sensitive nature of some of the sites involved, has restricted attempts to look at this material outside the confines of numismatic research. The importance of context for the study of material culture has long been understood and considerations of cultural, social and landscape context are common themes in archaeological research (e.g. Hingley and Willis 2007; Yates and Bradley 2010). Improved recording of findspots through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and increasing use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) by metal detector users means that a far greater proportion of hoards can now be reliably spatially located with a high degree of precision and so can be studied in their archaeological and topographical setting. As we shall see, the emphasis on landscape context in this project is a relatively new departure for the study of coin hoards.
The project was initially conceived as a study of Romano-British coin hoards only, providing a means of setting large late third-century hoards such as Frome I in a longer-term perspective, whilst opening a window on regional and chronological variations in coin hoarding across Britain. Definitions of hoards and hoarding are dealt with below and in Chapter 3. A preliminary study of Roman hoards and accompanying checklist was published by Bland (2018).
Since several first-century AD hoards contain both Roman and Iron Age coins, at an early stage we decided to include Iron Age coin hoards, as this offered a better starting point for analysing the extent to which indigenous practices and beliefs continued to exert a measurable influence on the deposition of coin hoards within and beyond the Roman province. Expanding the project in this way would not have been possible, but for the impending publication of a new corpus of Iron Age coin hoards (de Jersey 2014), then in its final stages of preparation. We are greatly indebted to Philip de Jersey, who kindly made his dataset available prior to publication. After the research for the IARCH project got underway, its scope was further enlarged by the award of AHRC funding for two Collaborative Doctoral Awards between the University of Leicester and the British Museum, one to investigate Iron Age object hoards (Wilkinson 2019), the other studying Roman metal object hoards, including an important group of mixed hoards of objects and coins (Sycamore 2018). Both studies will be published independently, but have informed the research presented here.
The context of current research into hoards
Although in recent years there have been various numismatic studies of individual hoards, and summaries of the available evidence from certain regions of England and Wales (e.g. Guest and Wells 2007; Penhallurick 2009; Shotter 2011), discussion of the wider context of coin hoards and the reasons for their burial has been limited. The series Coin Hoards from Roman Britain (CHRB) continues to publish catalogues of recent hoards, but generally with little accompanying discussion of their significance beyond the numismatic. The work of Hobbs (2006) is a rare example of a study that considers coin and artefact hoards together, but overall there has been a lack of consideration of Roman hoarding as an archaeological phenomenon.
The study of Roman coin hoards has tended to remain the preserve of numismatists and consequently has been somewhat excluded from wider theoretical debates in archaeology. Moreover, as many hoards are found by members of the public, they are not necessarily subject to study by archaeologists. Subsequent investigation is often limited because there is no dedicated funding stream for this work. When hoards are found on archaeological sites, they sometimes fall victim to a lack of integration between specialist reports and site narratives, whether in terms of the provision or use of the necessary contextual information, or the interpretation of technical information by non-specialists (Cumberpatch and Blinkhorn 2001). In the case of developer-funded excavations, hoards may become divorced from the site discussion due to a delay in cleaning coins for identification. Sometimes, potential hoards are not recognised as such until the post-excavation stage and in such cases this interpretation may be a rather subjective process on the part of the numismatist.
Explanations for the deposition of coin hoards are gradually changing and are being more actively debated in numismatics (Naylor and Bland 2015). Attempts to connect patterns of hoarding solely to historical events are increasingly seen as problematic and detailed studies of the continental evidence have found a lack of correlation between these themes (Guest 1994; Haupt 2001). In his review of research on third-century coin hoards, Peter (2003, 287) observed that although older studies linking historical events and coin hoards were still an influence, hoards were now more commonly seen in relation to monetary history. In a similar review, Estiot (2009, 157) remarked on the continuing split between those who see hoards as markers of insecurity and those who study them in relation to monetisation in more general terms. In discussing the third-century crisis Estiot (2009, 166) remarks on the need to escape the dominant ‘tyranny of the terminus’ through archaeological approaches. The inherent conservatism in numismatics is also noted by Guest (2015, 105) in a recent overview of the state of hoard studies.
Despite notes of caution expressed by economic historians (e.g. Duncan Jones 1990, 38), the prevailing view is that Roman hoards are, to a greater or lesser extent, reflective of a monetised economy (e.g. Guest 1994). If economic arguments still dominate numismatic understanding of why hoards were buried in the Roman period, however, this is less true for the Iron Age, where intentional deposition for ritual motives tends to be assumed for the majority of finds (Haselgrove 2015, 27). As Millett (1994, 99) noted, there is still something of a gulf between academic approaches to the Roman period and those prevalent in later prehistory, although the study of ‘ritual activity’ is certainly no longer neglected by Roman archaeologists to the extent that it once was. Interpretation of the Frome I hoard and ensuing debate (Naylor and Bland 2015), as well as sessions at the XV International Numismatic Congress held in Taormina in 2015, suggest a new openness towards alternative interpretations for coin hoard deposition, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.
Many Roman numismatists and archaeologists, particularly in other European countries, remain resistant to the possibility of ritual explanations for the deposition of hoards. Millett’s (1994) suggestion that in Britain modern perceptions of value and the constraints of the Treasure process have led to an unquestioning assumption that hoards were buried for safekeeping was strongly rejected by Johns (1994) in the same volume. However, Millett’s assertion can perhaps now be considered more dispassionately in hindsight following the 1996 Treasure Act. It can be argued that the old common law of Treasure Trove, whereby it was necessary to demonstrate that objects had been buried with the intention of recovery (animus revertendi) to qualify, had implications for how we define and discuss hoards, even if this bias is unconscious. Clearly, we can never fully understand past motivations and this was one of the most compelling arguments for reform of the old law, which resulted in the Treasure Act. Johns (1994) rightly made a distinction between the very specific rites implied by the word ‘votive’ (often used as a synonym for ritual) and items and contexts that she saw as more generally ‘ritual’ in nature. However, Johns did not address Millett’s (1994, 104) important point that ‘There is no need to consider hoarding and deposition in the ground or in wet places as either sacred or profane – all actions were most likely invested with significance in both spheres’.
The idea that ‘ritual’ and ‘rational’ explanations are interwoven in the archaeological record to such an extent that neither can be truly separated is gaining acceptance in Roman archaeology (e.g. Chadwick 2012, 2015; Fulford 2001), but has yet to percolate Roman numismatics. In seeking the essential ‘ritual’ character (or not) of a deposit, there is a failure to understand that such meanings do not necessarily reside solely in the nature of the artefacts themselves, but also in the context of their deposition. Not all hoards from settlement sites relate to the economic realm and not all hoards from temple sites are necessarily the result of ritualised activity.
Although numismatics has not undergone a theoretical paradigm shift parallel to developments in the social sciences during the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g. the advent of post-processual archaeologies), there has nevertheless been an increase in approaches dealing with coin circulation and use (often referred to as ‘applied numismatics’), supplementing more traditional and some would say ‘pure’ numismatic approaches focused on the construction of typologies and chronologies (Caltabiano and Arnold-Biucchi 2015, xi ff.). The influence of processual approaches can be seen in the efforts of Reece (1974), Creighton (1992, 2014), Guest (1994), Lockyear (1999) and others, to bring more rigorous methods to the study of coin hoards. However, it is impossible to ignore theoretical debates about how we can understand past practice through the examination of material culture. In archaeological studies, it is generally accepted that the meaning of material culture is context-dependent, making the lack of good contextual information for much numismatic data highly problematic. Dealing with ethical issues surrounding geographical provenance has been a further difficulty for numismatics. In some countries, like France, studying the distribution of single finds remains difficult for lack of data, and even in Britain, large-scale studies of single finds have only really been feasible since the establishment of the computerised CCI and PAS datasets (e.g. Leins 2012; Walton 2012).
Thanks to other recent developments, the situation is beginning to improve. In synthesising the results of developer-funded archaeological interventions, the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain project (RSRB) at Reading University has highlighted the crucial importance of artefacts, including coins, in the examination of the past (Allen et al. 2017; Smith et al. 2016, 2018). This and other large-scale projects have shown the potential of big data approaches and begun to fill the gaps in our comprehension of broader patterns of change and continuity in rural societies. Work by Robbins (2012) has enabled a better understanding of the biases inherent in the PAS dataset, and by extension, provides an awareness of its real value as a research tool.
Advances in conservation and imaging techniques have also begun to have an impact in the way that hoards are studied and even, anecdotally, in the way that they are treated by their finders. The publicity surrounding the Frome I hoard reached a wide audience in the metal detecting community and helped to emphasise the importance of the prompt excavation and recording of hoards in situ. Similarly, whilst the micro-excavation of hoards within their containers or soil blocks may not always yield results as informative as the individual parcels of the Beau Street hoard, Bath (IARCHF3D646), it has produced much interesting contextual information, such as the presence of organic material within containers, as in the ‘Selby area’ hoard from East Yorkshire (IARCH-996A9C, IARCH-F2BBEB), or layering within a vessel, as in the Shrewsbury area hoard (IARCH-1CEDC8) – all considered further in Chapter 6. Such details not only draw attention to the circumstances of burial, but moreover emphasise the hoard as an ‘artefact’ with its own biography.
The IARCH project complements other work being carried out in Britain and abroad. The Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire (CHRE) project at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, part of the Oxford Roman Economy Project, is gathering information on coin hoards dating between 30 BC and AD 400 across the Roman Empire. This long-running project has rather different objectives to ours, with a focus on collecting data at the level of the individual coin and the aim of understanding coin supply, circulation and use. The European Coin Find Network fosters co-operation between researchers, particularly the use of linked data and shared vocabularies for online databases, led by the American Numismatic Society’s Nomisma project. The results of these efforts can be seen in Lockyear’s digital database, Coin Hoards of the Roman Republic Online (http://numismatics.org/chrr). There is also increasing interest in archaeological approaches to coin hoards from later periods and a similar approach to that undertaken in this project is being applied to hoards from medieval Britain by Andrews (2019).
In addition to this volume and Bland 2018, the principal legacy of the IARCH project is an extensive coin hoard data-set, now incorporated into the PAS database (https://finds.org.uk/database/hoards). Hosted at the British Museum, this dataset will grow to encompass future discoveries, benefiting from the expertise of the curatorial staff, up-to-date knowledge from the processing of Treasure cases, and the work of local Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs). Using this database, future researchers will be able to re-interrogate the IARCH data and to access the expanding corpus of new information on Iron Age and Roman hoards.
Investigating coin hoards
There are many avenues of investigation for studying and interpreting coin hoards, including the examination of content and context, the methods employed in their formation and deposition, and their use as dating evidence. The theoretical basis to some of these is explored in Chapter 3, but all share the ability to generate original and significant information for understanding hoarding and its wider social meaning. These different avenues also inform the questions addressed by the IARCH project, which are set out below. However, it is worth stressing at the outset that we should take care when attempting to fit the material into our own agendas and constructed historical narratives, since the way in which we prioritise certain perspectives and methods of interpretation over others inevitably reflects our own research traditions and biases.
Hoard contents
The contents of coin hoards have the potential to provide important information on the social, political/ideological and economic significance of coin circulation, use and deposition, as well as the social and symbolic meanings of coin iconography and the production and metallurgy of coins. All these factors may have influenced the ways in which coins acquired significance in the past and would have formed an integral aspect of the hoards and the coins included within them. The capacity of numismatic studies of coin hoards to illuminate coin circulation and usage is already well documented (e.g. Abdy 2002a; Bland 2013, 2018; Guest and Wells 2007; Reece 2002a; Walton 2012), but their possibilities for addressing wider social issues connected with coin use remain to be exploited. For Iron Age Britain, for example, research is now elucidating ways in which coinage was used, perceived and deposited. Better understanding of the meanings and practices associated with Iron Age coin use in turn prompts us to examine how and to what extent these factors might have continued to influence the use and deposition of coins during the Roman occupation.
By examining hoard contents there is much that can be gleaned from study of the coins themselves (as well as any associated objects) as they represent the ‘interplay of image, text and materiality’ (Kemmers and Myrberg 2011, 89). Social meanings may have been attached to metals and metal objects in hoards, which purely numismatic approaches on their own will not necessarily reveal. As Kemmers and Myrberg argue, anthropological, ethnographic and sociological studies of metals and metalworking (e.g. Herbert 1993) may provide insights of a very different kind into coin production and use, cultural values, and the relational agency of humans and objects. To understand Iron Age and Roman coin hoarding, we also need to consider what coin use and hoarding meant in other periods and contexts (e.g. Hall 2012; Herva, Nurmi and Symonds 2012; Krmnicek and Elkins 2014).
Dating hoards
Conventionally hoards have been dated according to the latest coin they contain, and scholars have then used this date as a tool for reconstructing the historical context. Caution is needed in using this method. There are a few hoards that have been archaeologically investigated for which there is stratigraphic evidence suggesting that there was a significant time gap between the date of minting of the latest coin and the date when the hoard was deposited (Bland 2018, 69). Some hoards, particularly large ones, may have been accumulated over longer periods as a result of many events, potentially by different people. Although wear on the coins can provide a rough estimate for the date of deposition in some cases, in others, coins may have been stored unused for some time prior to being placed in the hoard, let alone deposited.
On the other hand, for much of the Roman period Britain received a regular supply of new coins, and this is broadly the case from Nero’s reform of AD 64 to the end of the Gallic Empire in 274, and from 296 to c.402. It has been argued elsewhere that during these periods it is likely that most hoards would have been buried close to the date of the latest coin, although it would be difficult to demonstrate this in any individual case (Bland 2018, 48). If this is accepted, it means that when there are peaks of hoards that close with coins of the same period, it is most likely that these were deposited at roughly the same time. However, particular care needs to be taken for periods when there was an interruption in coin supply, for example in the twenty years before Nero’s reform, or after the end of the Gallic Empire in 274, because at these times hoards could well have been deposited significantly later than the date of the latest coin (Bland 2018, 34–5, 89–92).
Another issue is that not all hoards are found at their primary point of deposition. Hoards may originally have been inserted into roof spaces, walls or simply kept within rooms, not entering the archaeological record until the building collapsed (Chapter 5). In such situations, incorporation of the hoard into the building was the key chronological event, but it is this secondary context that we recover through archaeology. Thus, a hoard may not relate to the structural phase of a building with which it appears to be most directly associated and unless we can unpick the sequence of events, the date it produces may be misleading. Despite these complexities, coin hoards are routinely used to date specific phases of activity within settlement sites and buildings – and are indeed seen as more reliable for dating than single finds. As King’s (2013) research has emphasised, we need to be more critical of the way in which we create site chronologies, whether through coins, pottery or any other material evidence.
The dating of coin hoards links into the wider historical narratives of the Roman period and to a lesser extent those of the late Iron Age. There is a long history of linking coin hoards to ‘historical’ events such as barbarian invasions. However, the relationship between hoards and historical events has been recognised as an uneasy one, which in turn has begun to foster other approaches to hoarding (Guest 1994; Hobbs 2006). We might, for example explore the wider social implications of large concentrations of hoards in specific periods, such as during certain decades of the third century, rather than merely positioning them according to recorded historical events. Whilst bringing all the evidence together can be immensely powerful, it is important to be critical of the way in which narratives are constructed from specific perspectives.
The context of deposition
The methods employed in forming and depositing coin hoards are also important in understanding their significance. Valuable insights can be gathered from the choice of hoard location, the material that accompanies the hoard, such as the type of container (if any) and any other items deposited with the coins (Chapter 6). Each hoard has unique attributes reflecting the people and circumstances that contributed to its creation and deposition. Whilst there would have been individual choices made in the deposition of hoards, there may also have been local, regional or wider trends or rules that governed the choice of where and how hoards were deposited. In his study of later prehistoric and Roman ironwork, Hingley (2006) identified repeated contexts for deposition including ‘natural’ locations, wetland and river areas; shrines or temples; enclosed settlements and wells or deep pits. These contexts would seem to be important elements governing the location and context of hoards, which could be significant both in terms of the meaning of the hoards and their wider social implications including individual, local and regional identities. Richard Bradley’s (2013) study of Bronze Age metalwork has suggested that particular types of objects were chosen to be deposited in specific locations. It may be that there was some kind of landscape grammar in the past, which dictated the types of contexts that were suitable for certain items and thus assists in explaining the overall motive behind that deposition.
Research questions
The IARCH project presented an opportunity to re-evaluate coin hoarding in Iron Age and Roman Britain in light of the increased quantity and quality of evidence uncovered in recent years. The project aimed to examine coin hoards from an archaeological as well as a numismatic perspective, to seek a more nuanced approach to understanding hoards and their wider political, economic and social significance. Although reasons for the burial and non-recovery of hoards will continue to be debated, with there being no single explanation for these practices, it is clear that a better understanding of the mechanisms of hoarding and deposition can only be achieved as part of a wider understanding of the social and landscape contexts of these activities.
The research was structured according to three main themes. The first sought to define the broad temporal and spatial patterning of coin hoards in Britain. The second aspect was a programme of investigation of the archaeological and landscape contexts of individual hoards, including site visits and geophysical survey of selected sites. The third area of research focused on the methodological and theoretical issues underlying the study of hoarding and deposition. The research undertaken within these three themes addressed the following questions:
1. Why were coin hoards buried?
The primary aim of the research was to investigate the circumstances and possible explanations for the deposition of the many coin hoards of Iron Age and Roman Britain. Chronological fluctuations in the deposition of these hoards were examined with a particular focus on the apparent peak in coin hoarding during the third century in Britain (see research question 2).
The Iron Age to Roman transition was also of particular interest, and changes in the pattern of hoarding were investigated to establish the extent of continuities of practices from the Iron Age into the Roman period (Bland 2018, 25–43). Particularly pertinent were questions of whether differences in the generally accepted explanations for the deposition of hoards in the Iron Age and in the Roman period are reflected in the archaeological record, or simply due to different traditions of interpretation. Equally, if there was a change in the role of coinage, when did this take place? The question of the function of coinage and the relationship between hoarding and monetisation is also relevant to the period at the end of Roman Britain, when the coin supply eventually collapsed.
2. Why were so many coin hoards buried in Britain in the third century AD?
The IARCH project was specifically interested in whether the peak in the later third century indicated a change in longer-term patterns of hoarding in Britain and, if so, whether this could be linked to specific economic, social and/or political circumstances at this time. Comparisons with the Continent might indicate whether these patterns were distinctively British, or part of a wider set of social and political changes. In fact analysis of the CHRE dataset, which has only recently become available, has shown that many other provinces had a higher proportion of third-century hoards than Britain, and Britain actually has a higher proportion of fourth-century hoards than anywhere else (Chapter 9). Traditional explanations of increased hoarding relate to periods of conflict or widespread economic and social insecurity, such as the English Civil War (Bland 2018, 20–1; Naylor and Bland 2015). However, alternative hypotheses such as monetary reform and changes in ritual practices also required investigation. This question has wider implications for the contribution of coin hoards for understanding the economic, political and religious history of the Roman Empire (see research question 3).
3. The nature of the third century in Roman Britain
One of the main aims of the project was to investigate, in more detail, Britain in the third century and provide a context to the peak in hoard deposition apparent at this period. As already indicated, this has generally been explained through reference to putative political and economic instability in Britain. To study the wider social context of coin hoarding and develop a critical framework for analysis and interpretation, it was therefore necessary to re-assess the existing archaeological, epigraphic and historical evidence for third-century Britain, and to see if such meta-narratives of conflict and crisis were still valid in modern research.
4. How should we interpret coin hoards?
A further important research question addressed the nature and interpretation of hoarding. Examining different approaches to how and why recent research focuses on certain interpretations of coin hoards was essential in moving understanding forward and interpreting hoards in new ways. An archaeological approach highlighted the varied nature of hoard assemblages beyond the specific criteria of the 1996 Treasure Act, and thus the potential biases in the dataset. Possible discrepancies between archaeological and numismatic evidence for dates of burial were assessed to examine the depositional histories of hoards and gradually accumulated deposits were investigated alongside those traditionally interpreted as hoards to give a more holistic view of depositional practices and the role of coinage in ritual practices. The results of the doctoral research noted above (Sycamore 2018; Wilkinson 2019) have also contributed to this more rounded understanding of hoarding and deposition.
5. How do coin hoards relate to the landscapes of Iron Age and Roman Britain?
Examination of the landscape context of coin hoards formed a key avenue of research for the IARCH project. To provide a wider understanding of the motives behind the selection of specific locations, the placement of Iron Age and Roman hoards was examined at different scales. GIS analyses were used to investigate the relationship between hoards, the natural landscape (e.g. relief, aspect, rivers) and the cultural landscape (e.g. settlements, towns, temples). We also looked at regional and chronological differences in the distribution and treatment of hoards and how hoards relate to single coin finds recorded on PAS. Within a framework of five regional study areas, hoard findspots were studied in relation to a range of potentially significant natural and anthropogenic features such as rock outcrops, watercourses, caves, linear earthworks, barrows and hillforts and some clusters of hoards were subject to closer topographic investigation.
6. What can be learnt from the archaeological context of coin hoards?
Research was undertaken into the archaeological context of hoards, to see what light this could shed on reasons for their deposition and/or non-recovery. A significant constraint is the fact that most hoards recovered through agricultural or construction activity have limited archaeological information, also true of many older metal detector (MD) finds. The situation has greatly improved in recent years, with co-operation between detectorists and archaeologists regularly allowing findspots to be investigated through geophysical survey and/or controlled excavation. Analysis of coin hoards recovered from archaeological sites – mostly but not always in excavations – aimed to identify national, regional and diachronic patterns in deposition on different categories of site, and in particular types of archaeological feature. Traditional numismatic approaches tend to focus on the coins and pay little attention to containers or other artefacts associated with hoards, or to the site of discovery. The IARCH project set out to redress this, too, by investigating these other dimensions and looking for spatial and temporal patterns, and possible changes in practice. We sought to understand whether hoards were hidden or concealed, discarded, or deposited without intention of recovery; and whether aspects of their contexts and associated material culture could inform our knowledge of such complex processes.
Methodology
Origins of the dataset
The numismatic database for the IARCH project was commissioned from Jerome Mairat (Ashmolean Museum) in 2013, designed using Microsoft Access. The online version has been adapted from the existing PAS database, ensuring that the staff of the British Museum and PAS will be able to update it in future.
Robertson’s (2000) corpus of Roman coin hoards from Britain and Ireland formed the foundation of the project dataset. More recently discovered hoards (after Robertson’s 1992 cut-off point) collected by Bland up to c.2012 from published sources (Treasure Annual Reports and annual summaries in the British Numismatic Journal and Numismatic Chronicle) and unpublished digital records held by the British Museum were added to the database, which was modified to incorporate the required archaeological and object-based fields. Addenda to hoards appearing as separate Treasure cases were amalgamated with the entry for their original find.
Once the database was operational, additional hoards were incorporated up to December 2014. A manual search of the paper archives held by the British Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals was carried out in order to complete the records for each hoard and add unpublished hoards. The British Museum paper records date back to the 1950s and contain administrative paperwork for cases reported as Treasure Trove, including original Treasure forms (with findspots), and sometimes transcripts of inquests, correspondence from the finder, accounts of unpublished archaeological investigations, and catalogues and photographs of the hoard contents. Base-metal and bronze coin hoards did not qualify as Treasure Trove prior to the 1996 Treasure Act. Records pre-dating the Second World War are patchy, and many are thought to have been lost when the British Museum was bombed in 1941. An archive search did, however, reveal some bound volumes of correspondence relating to cases in the 1920s.
As noted, the completion of a new corpus of British Iron Age hoards by Philip de Jersey (2014) contributed to the decision to expand the project into the Iron Age in order to characterise pre-existing practices and to be able to examine changes in coin hoarding across the key period of the Iron Age to Roman transition. New records were created for the hoards listed by de Jersey, and for hoards in British Museum files after de Jersey’s cut-off date (2010). Although many of the hoards listed by de Jersey had been through the Treasure process, his corpus included information from the Celtic Coin Index (CCI) which allowed the reconstruction of some probable hoards recorded through the coin trade that were not reported as Treasure.
A further significant stage was to identify as many as possible of the hoards that for one reason or another had escaped the existing corpora or not been recorded at the British Museum. These included hoards found in excavations, both old and more recent, bronze coin hoards that did not qualify as Treasure prior to 1996, and some more recent finds that fell below its threshold of ten bronze coins (below). As well as PAS, searches were conducted on both national and regional heritage databases. For England and Wales, Historic Environment Records (HERs) were initially consulted online through the Heritage Gateway portal, and then directly; many local authorities were able to provide GIS shapefiles and accompanying records on request. National online heritage records – in the form of Historic England’s Pastscape, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales’s Coflein, and Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore – proved particularly useful for references to excavated coin hoards. A further wide-ranging, but by no means exhaustive, search for excavated hoards was made in published monographs, national and regional journals, and unpublished ‘grey literature’ accessible through the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) or obtained from archaeological field units, although it was not always possible to obtain detailed information about the constituent coins. Over 600 hoards were added from these various sources, four-fifths of them (79%) discovered in the course of antiquarian or more recent archaeological investigations.
Each identified hoard from England and Wales was assigned a unique IARCH number. Hoards found in more than one discrete container were generally allocated separate records, but for various reasons complete consistency was not always possible, and some ‘multiple’ hoards simply have a global IARCH number. Hoards from Scotland and Ireland were also listed (and appear in Bland’s 2018 checklist), but do not have IARCH records, since the PAS does not operate beyond England and Wales. The hoards from Scotland feature in the wider archaeological and historical discussion, but are not included in the landscape analysis in Chapter 4, which is confined to England and Wales. Hoards from the Channel Islands are treated as part of the continental pattern of coin circulation and are not discussed here. Whilst some hoards will undoubtedly have been missed and others continue to come to light, we are confident that the 3,302 records of Iron Age and Roman coin hoards from Britain compiled by the project represent a comprehensive and representative catalogue to the end of 2014. Their geographical distribution is shown in Fig. 1.1. All told, the project has added records of over one thousand hoards beyond those listed by Robertson (2000) and de Jersey (2014).
The IARCH dataset is available as an online resource via the PAS database, with its own search screen at https://finds.org.uk/database/hoards, where the project records have the prefix IARCH. New coin hoards from England and Wales will continue to be added to the PAS database, with an annual summary in the British Numismatic Journal. When the IARCH project began, FLOs had increasingly been recording Treasure cases on the PAS database to aid workflow, and the streamlining of Treasure recording was being investigated due to the need to replace the British Museum’s in-house system for administering Treasure cases. Recording single finds and hoards together has both practical and theoretical advantages for a research dataset. The IARCH dataset benefits from the more sophisticated system available in PAS for recording artefacts associated with hoards and other PAS functionality such as its use of linked open data. More important still, integrating the hoards into PAS made the database a sustainable resource for recording future finds, rather than one which ended on completion of the project. Equally, the distinction between ‘single finds’ and ‘hoards’ is not always clear-cut, and the status of individual finds may alter as new information or material comes to light.
In the monograph, hoards from England and Wales are generally referred to by their IARCH number, rather than with full citations. Further details and references can be found in the online records, and in Bland’s (2018) checklist of 3,414 Iron Age and Roman coin hoards from Britain and 10 from Ireland (North and South). In addition to the 3,302 hoards recorded by the IARCH project, Bland’s checklist includes 79 hoards from England, Wales and Scotland reported in 2015 and 33 other finds registered after the 2014 cut-off date.
Fig. 1.1. Distribution of Iron Age and Roman coin hoards from Britain and Ireland (source: IARCH).
Data collection
As Robertson herself acknowledged, her corpus of Roman coin hoards from Britain (2000) is of variable quality, not least as it contains a significant number of early accounts. These antiquarian reports do have inherent value, however, and the records of discovery can contain important circumstantial details even when the numismatic evidence is poor. It was not, however, possible for the IARCH project to reinvestigate the historic record systematically in the level of detail undertaken by Robertson in what was essentially her life’s work. Robertson consulted county journals, historic publications, newspapers and museum collections, with remarkable attention to detail. For this reason, it was considered worthwhile to preserve her entries as a record of what may have been designated a hoard in the past, whilst acknowledging that many of these references might have only limited value for modern study.
Robertson’s corpus required some revision, not least in relation to her grouping of hoards by latest emperor, which is problematic for the Gallic Empire and the fourth century. The use of other methodologies such as Reece periods (RPs: see Chapter 2), reverse types or closer numismatic dating (in the case of siliqua hoards) presents a rather different picture. Precise findspots are also absent from Robertson’s corpus, except for some four-figure national grid references (NGRs). Details of provenance were therefore newly researched for the IARCH dataset, drawing on original publications where possible, and the British Museum’s files which in some cases provided contextual information additional to the numismatic publication. For hoards reported after 1997, findspot information has been recorded systematically on Treasure forms at the time of reporting a discovery. In some cases, there has unfortunately been a reluctance to provide precise grid references to a level useful for research purposes. A key recommendation of the IARCH project is that in future the location of coin hoard finds should wherever possible be recorded to a minimum of 8- rather than 6-figure NGR, which is currently the minimum requirement set out in the Code of Practice on the Treasure Act (1996), as this often does not allow sensitive analysis of the topographic setting of hoard findspots.
The data collected for each hoard can be split into several sections, according to the way it is structured in the PAS database:
1. Basic information for each hoard
This section consists of a description of the finds, the number of coins, artefacts and containers and the primary material represented in the hoard, as well as dates of discovery, Treasure numbers, bibliographic references and location (public collection) where known.
Chronological information is summarised according to the date of the latest coin (or coins) in the hoard where known, expressed as a range (e.g. AD 395–402), along with the Reece period (RP) into which the hoard falls (see Chapter 2), and the name of the latest authority represented. This date range is not necessarily the date when the hoard was thought to be buried, for example, in the case of late fourth-century hoards, where the coins are likely to have circulated for some time before entering the ground. Even if this date cannot be known for certain, it does allow for broad comparison between hoards. A drop-down list of qualifiers records factors such as whether the whole hoard is known to have been recorded, whether the latest coin was an imitation (and therefore likely to be later than the date of the original), if the hoard was too poorly preserved to be identified, and if it represents a deposit thought to have been formed by more gradual accumulation (for example a river deposit).
It should be noted here that the accuracy of the given dating varies according to the period in question. For example, coins of Diva Faustina have traditionally been assigned broad dates and the database entries reflect this, forming clusters around these terminal dates. The standard PAS ranges are used for barbarous radiates and ‘
FEL TEMP REPARATIO
’ copies (Brickstock 1987), but, as with much numismatic dating, they are subject to debate and revision. Other numismatic issues are considered in the following chapters when reflecting on national and regional trends.
2. Summary of numismatic contents
This section includes a summary of the numismatic contents. Where possible, this lists the main emperors, or issue periods, denominations and mints in a systematic way to allow comparison between hoards. For some hoards, where separate PAS records of coins existed, they have been linked to the hoard record, along with any information for vessels and artefacts found in or with the hoard. This level of information was achieved, for example, for the data imported into PAS from the Guest and Wells (2007) dataset of hoards in Wales, which were all recorded at the level of the individual coin.
3. Findspot information
This section follows the format for PAS records, with different levels of visibility according to access rights to the PAS datasets (see https://finds.org.uk/help/database/topic/id/7). The findspot was entered from the NGR as quoted, unless this was found to be incorrect or not provided, in which case it had to be centred on the parish. The information in the database preserved the level of accuracy of the reporting of the findspot. Data on land use and method of discovery are also included, along with any confidential information about the precise circumstances of discovery.
4. Archaeological information
A number of fields were created to record archaeological information about the findspot, including whether geophysical survey or excavation took place and, where applicable, summary details of the nature and dating of the site and the type of context or feature in which the hoard was found.
Defining a coin hoard
A hoard in its broadest sense can be defined as a group of items collected together and, in archaeological terms, perhaps deposited together. Historically, the definition of a hoard has been influenced by the common law concept of Treasure Trove, which was superseded by the Treasure Act 1996 in England and Wales. Both provisions have heavily influenced the recovery, definition and interpretation of what constitutes a hoard, although of course the legal definitions of Treasure Trove (before 1997) and now Treasure (since 1997) were never intended to be the same as the archaeological or numismatic interpretation of a hoard.
The old Treasure Trove law was limited to objects of gold and silver deliberately buried with the intention of recovery. Thus, it was not obligatory to report hoards of base-metal coins, and an unknown number will have escaped recording in this way. This did however lead to inconsistent practice. For example, in the assemblages recovered during the 1970s and 1980s by metal detector at Stonea Grange (Cambridgeshire), the precious-metal coins were selected and identified as hoards for the Treasure process, but the base-metal coins were not. The 1996 Treasure Act has resolved many of these problems, but not all. It defines a coin hoard as two or more coins at least 300 years old and of at least 10% by weight of precious-metal content, or ten or more base-metal coins, from the same find. Although far more embracing, this still does not cover all coin hoards, as those with fewer than ten base-metal coins are excluded. However, the PAS encourages the voluntary reporting of all finds of coins and many such groups are recorded on the PAS database: one example is a group of eight coins closing in 406–408 from Whittington, Northumberland (IARCH-3B0631): this was not Treasure, but was recorded through the PAS.
The old law required that to qualify as Treasure Trove, a ‘hoard’ must have been buried with intent of recovery. This was traditionally deemed to exclude ritual deposits, meaning that coin hoards from temple sites and assemblages that built up over time, for example at the Sacred Spring in Bath, did not qualify. More importantly, as metal detecting became more popular, the issue of whether coins from ritual sites had been buried with the intent of recovery gave rise to some major controversies, not least because categorisation of the finds had direct implications for their ownership – whether they belonged to the Crown or to the landowner – and thus their eventual destination. Among the most notorious cases was the looting in the 1980s of a huge number of Iron Age and Roman coins from the site of a Roman temple at Wanborough, Surrey (IARCH-ABD376). The 1989–91 discovery of multiple Iron Age torc and coin hoards on another possible sacred site at Snettisham, Norfolk (IARCH-5B6A7C, etc.), gave rise to yet more vigorous debate about the nature of the deposits and the site (see p. 57; Fitzpatrick 1992; Stead 1991).
Such incidents were among the catalysts for the 1996 Treasure Act, which came into force in 1997 and both removed the need to prove the motivations of the depositors and provided for ritual deposits occurring in the same place over a period of time. The Act includes (a) hoards that have been deliberately hidden; (b) groups such as the contents of purses, which may have been dropped or lost and (c) votive or ritual deposits. All these categories are considered to be potential Treasure, with the old requirement to prove intention of recovery being replaced with the need to show that the objects are ‘of the same find’, i.e. found in the same place or formerly in physical association with each other. This is defined broadly and would cover, for example, the contents of a well or even a temple precinct. Accumulations at sacred sites may therefore be deemed Treasure, but are not considered to be hoards per se. In practice, there is some difficulty in distinguishing a votive deposit from a hoard or determining whether accumulations of coins derive from a series of discrete deposits. Work at Piercebridge, County Durham, has highlighted the presence of an unusual riverine assemblage, and deliberate deposits in rivers and at river crossings are clearly much more common than was once thought (Chapter 5). While these examples are not hoards sensu stricto, they do represent items deliberately deposited in the same place.
The chance discovery and subsequent excavation and recording of multiple Iron Age and Roman coin hoards in a clearly ritual context at Hallaton (Score 2011), provides an excellent example of the benefits of the 1996 legislation. Another significant change is that the 1996 Act extends to artefacts of any material found with an object defined as Treasure. An entire assemblage from a find site can in theory be declared Treasure, although in practice some discretion is used here. For example, at Ashwell (Hertfordshire) the Treasure definition was only applied to a number of ‘placed deposits’, but all types of material from these deposits were included, rather than just metal items, as might well have been the case in the past (Jackson and Burleigh 2018). The Treasure Act does, however, exclude associated ‘unworked natural objects’ such as animal bone. Whilst a pragmatic necessity, due to the impossibility of establishing contemporaneity where there is no archaeological context, this can inadvertently result in reinforcing an economic interpretation of hoards by focusing on coins and artefacts.
For the IARCH project, a loose working definition of a coin hoard as three or more coins deposited together was adopted. This has the advantage of including small base-metal hoards disregarded by the Treasure process. The disadvantage of this broad definition is seen in excavated assemblages – where it is not uncommon to find several coins in a single layer – and some subjective judgement was required if this were not to become an impossibly large category. Exceptionally, a few Treasure cases consisting of just two precious-metal coins were included on the basis of their importance for understanding smaller hoards. We have also followed Bland (2018) in including all associated material, not just artefacts, and by rejecting the requirement for a hoard to have been deliberately placed in the ground (or, indeed, a building). This formulation allows us to consider all the material that formed part of the deposit, and the process of hoard formation, and applies to deposits that were originally placed above ground or in water as well as below ground.
Whilst a number of new hoards were recognised on this looser definition, as we have noted, the biggest source of previously unlisted hoards has been the archaeological literature. More controversially for some, perhaps, but in keeping with the 1996 definition of Treasure, we have also included some coin groups that appeared to have been deliberately placed in pits, springs or rivers over a period of time. This was part of an explicit move towards treating coin hoards as archaeological entities, rather than a rarefied category of separate numismatic study. This in turn permits us to consider coin hoards in the wider context of Iron Age and Romano-British depositional practices. Our approach does not make a priori assumptions about the reasons behind deposition, thereby seeking to circumvent the often unhelpful and rather reductionist numismatic explanations frequently offered for hoarding, such as concealment for safekeeping, or a consequence of debasement or other monetary reasons. We also seek to avoid rigid binary distinctions between functional and ritual or sacred and prosaic, which are widely recognised as historically contingent and a product of post-Enlightenment capitalist thought (e.g. Brück 1999a; Chadwick 2012, 2015a). The motivations and values of people in the past might have been (and probably often were) very different to those of today.
Dealing with the antiquarian dataset has posed its own problems. Some entries in Robertson’s (2000) corpus would probably not now be considered hoards, as they do not meet the necessary criteria, while a large group lack the information necessary to decide one way or the other. Whilst the former were excluded where there is serious doubt or because new information had come to light, the latter were generally retained to provide as full a record as possible. This inclusion is important in cases where antiquarian reports have been referred to in separate secondary sources, including HERs, and have been cross-referenced by the project for the first time.
Data quality: biases and ratings
The use of a rating scheme for the reliability of the data was considered vital to categorising hoards in terms of usefulness. Separate ratings were assigned to the numismatic, locational and contextual information in order to facilitate more detailed analyses. The three separate ratings were necessary, since it is frequently the case that one aspect of a hoard is well recorded, but others are not. As outlined below, the rating scheme permitted a more targeted approach, with poorly documented hoards retained for basic information, but excluded from more detailed analysis. The rating scheme should also be useful for future researchers who use the database. A four-fold weighting system of 1–4 was devised, to avoid any potential ‘clustering’ of hoards that would unduly bias the data; for example, in a weighting system of 1–5, there might be undue emphasis on hoards rated as ‘3’.
Numismatic information
The rating for numismatic quality was based upon the extent of information recorded for the coins, ranging from simplistic statements to full catalogues undertaken to modern standards.
N1 Poor (some very basic details of hoard, e.g. report lists ‘a pot of gold coins’)
N2 Fair (contents poorly recorded, i.e. in summary or only a portion recorded in full)
N3 Good (coin list complete but catalogue falls below modern standards, i.e. does not allow standard references to be assigned, or lacks illustrations/images)
N4 Excellent (full catalogue of coins in hoard often with images)
Locational information
The quality rating for location was based on a combination of the available NGR and any written descriptions.
L1 Poor (4-figure NGR or worse, e.g. ‘conyes disturbed some ancient medalles or coynes’ [sic] in the seventeenth century; farm and field not known; MD find with no findspot or only parish name)
L2 Fair (6-figure NGR, e.g. name of farm, or description mentions ‘next to church’; ‘1 mile west of’ etc, to within the nearest 100–200 m)
L3 Good (8-figure NGR, e.g. location within a field, wood or town is known to within the nearest 10–20 m)
L4 Excellent (10-figure NGR, e.g. precise location is known to within the nearest square metre)
Due to the large number of antiquarian records and older MD finds where, prior to the PAS, recording was minimal, many coin hoards had only 4-figure NGRs or less, and so could not be assigned findspots other than at parish or settlement level.
Contextual information
Excavated hoards were graded according to the quality of archaeological information pertaining to their find context.
C1 Poor (hoard from an archaeological site, but no further details, as with many antiquarian discoveries)
C2 Fair (basic information on site and context, e.g. from a Roman villa or in a building, but lacking further details, such as dating evidence for the context or stratigraphy; or a scattered hoard not in its original context)
C3 Good (clear record of site and context, e.g. from a pit, but full details of associations and/or site setting lacking or unpublished; or follow-up work of limited scale)
C4 Excellent (comprehensive record/publication of the find, e.g. modern excavation with full stratigraphic information for the hoard context, its associations and wider site setting)
Landscape analysis and the IARCH study areas
One of the principal aims of the project was to analyse the landscape settings of Iron Age and Romano-British coin hoards. Two scales were adopted, the first a national-scale ‘overview’ of the patterning of hoard locations throughout England and Wales, using a series of simple GIS-based analyses relating to selected physical geographical and ‘natural’ characteristics and cultural associations. Details of the approach adopted for the GIS analysis are outlined in Chapter 4.
To complement the GIS-based analysis, five regional study areas were selected for further examination of find-spots, as the size of the dataset and the finite length of the project made it impossible to cover the whole of England and Wales in depth (see Chapter 4 and Fig. 4.8). The areas were chosen partly for their diverse environments but also as exemplars to be compared to the wider body of data. Factors examined included aspect, slope, proximity to watercourses and topographic setting. Where possible, we attempted to narrow down imprecisely recorded findspots in the study areas, using old series Ordnance Survey maps, place-names, county histories and other archive information. In some instances, it was possible to assign hitherto vaguely provenanced finds to specific fields, buildings or other archaeological features, such as round barrows.
Regions
In addition to the IARCH study areas, reference is frequently made in the monograph to the regions of England created by the Government, comprising the South East, Greater London, the East of England, the South West, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East and the North West (Fig. 1.2). For administrative and analytical purposes, for England the PAS follows the Government regions within which local authorities are grouped; some literature refers to them as ‘PAS regions’, but they are termed Government regions here. Wales is counted as a single region, while as already noted Scotland is not part of the PAS and has different Treasure legislation. For some analyses in this monograph, Greater London is included as part of the South East. Occasional reference is also made to the regional groupings into which Haselgrove (1987) subdivided British Iron Age coinage and broadly adopted in more recent work (e.g. de Jersey 2014; Leins 2012); these are denoted in italics.
Site visits and case studies
As part of the investigation, a number of hoard findspots were selected for site visits, with researchers physically accessing the location of the discovery site and taking notes and photographs (Chapter 4). Site visits were mostly undertaken in, but not confined to, the five IARCH study areas, and case studies were made of the topographical setting of some clusters of hoards. The intention was to provide additional insights into the landscape context of the hoards. This experiential engagement with the landscape setting was considered helpful to understanding how and why hoards might have been deposited, and whether they had in fact been intended for recovery.
Geophysical surveys were also undertaken on a small sample of findspots, representing both recent discoveries and historic records. The locations were selected from a longer list of findspots to which access was possible within the timeframe of the IARCH project, and there were archaeological features of interest in the vicinity or grounds to anticipate subsoil archaeology (Table 1.1). Copies of all the survey reports have been deposited with the relevant local HER.
Hoards and archaeological sites
Hoards found in excavations and others associated with archaeological sites are examined in Chapter 5. The ‘sites’ subset includes hoards found during both ‘rescue’ and research excavations, and post-PPG16 developer-funded interventions, together with finds from antiquarian exploration, and findspots that had seen controlled archaeological investigation after an initial discovery by detectorists. Excavated hoards generally have the best contextual data. Provenance information for many non-excavated site hoards and antiquarian finds is often too unspecific to be of use for contextual analysis, and in extreme cases it is unclear whether the hoard was actually from a particular site or what sort of site it was. A further problem is that many old excavation reports contain little contextual information, as excavators tended to ‘clear’ the interiors of Roman buildings without due consideration of stratigraphic context. Last but not least, many site hoards derive from the investigation of Roman forts, towns and villas in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, imparting a bias towards these types of settlements and the structures they contain.
Determining whether coins from archaeological sites constitute hoards is not always straightforward, especially if no longer in their primary context of deposition, or lacking a container. Even where a group of coins comes from an apparently closed deposit, we must be alive to the possibility that discrete losses may have been accidentally brought together later, as with coins falling between floorboards, although such occurrences may be apparent on numismatic grounds. Equally, thanks to the constant reworking of archaeological deposits that occurred on many occupied sites, it is not uncommon for hoards to have been disturbed after burial and physically dispersed. The existence of a scattered hoard is most readily inferred when a group of coins departs from the typical pattern of site finds. This could, for instance, be where coins from a period that is generally poorly represented on archaeological sites are recovered in elevated numbers, e.g. a group of earlier third-century issues at Braintree, Essex (IARCH-FC44AA), or where an unusual number
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