HOARD (ROMAN)

9 denarii to Caligula, 251 Durotrigan base silver/bronze staters, 19 other Roman coins to 4th cent AD, probably not part of hoard.



De Jersey (2015): "A large hoard of mostly very base silver or bronze staters of the Durotriges, many of them fragmentary and/or underweight, apparently found with a smaller number of Roman coins. Little information is available on the precise circumstances of the

discovery, other than that the coins were recovered in an excavation by members of the New Forest section of the Hampshire Field Club, which took place between 1981 and 1984 (R. Reeves, pers. Comm.). Although some information about the excavation is given in the section newsletter for 1985/6, there is no mention of the coins, apparently because of concerns about illicit metal detecting (D. Allen, pers. Comm.). The site is said to have included a number of ditches, a possible cremation burial, and ceramics of the first centuries BC and AD.

There are 279 coins in the group accessioned by HCMS, 28 of which are Roman and the remainder Iron Age. This matches the 251 which were examined by Melinda Mays in 1987 and which form the basis of the CCI record. One of the Iron Age coins is described as a site find in the Hampshire accessions database (HMCMS N1997.13.155), but it is not clear which coin this is in the CCI records."

Parish: Restricted Access
District: New Forest
County: Hampshire
Region: South East
Place known as: Fordingbridge
Discovery method: Controlled archaeological investigation
Notes: 
Note that the Iron Age coins could make this later in date than the reign of Gaius. Other Roman coins listed by de Jersey but excluded as probably not part of hoard.



De Jersey writes: "Also very unclear is the association of the Roman coins with the Iron Age staters. Brief details of the Roman coins are given below, based on the Hampshire records, but some of these are evidently unlikely to have been part of a hoard with the Iron Age material. It is tempting to suggest that the nine denarii up to Caligula could have been associated with the hoard, and the seventeen bronzes of the third and fourth century AD were definitely not, but unfortunately that leaves the two mid-second century AD bronzes hovering uncertainly between the two groups; it is by no means impossible that coins of this date could have been associated with a predominantly Durotrigan hoard, cf. Holdenhurst (103). Our understanding of the hoard might therefore benefit from further examination of the paper archive at HCMS, if indeed it does contain more detail about the circumstances in which the coins were recovered."