Multilingual coin inscriptions in pre Roman East Anglia
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-11-07

Inscriptions on ancient British coins mostly name the war-lords, rulers, or officials responsible for the coinages in question, and lend scraps of insight into language use, at least amongst the senior social elite in southern Britain, between the late first century BC and c. AD 45 or 60, or whenever native coinage ended after Claudius' conquest. Almost all such names are plainly in Brittonic, or are in Latin reflecting Brittonic (an interesting language choice in its own right). There are, however, some conspicuous exceptions, all in Norfolk, where several coin inscriptions record non-.Latin, non-Brittonic, but plausibly West Germanic names and speech-forms. These must belong to some of the richest and most influential families in the northern cantons of the Civitas Icenorum, long before the Romans can have had any direct influence on the character of Britain's ethnic mix. They therefore raise some very interesting questions about the identity and maritime connections of some of the permanent residents of the Fen edge and North-Sea shoreline.

Author: Dr Nash Briggs, Daphne - Retired (Presenting author)