Coins Found in a Dutch Field Raise Many Questions
How did they get there? Who brought them? More importantly, who forgot them?
Like using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
This is a riff on a Guardian story by Daniel Boffey from January 2025.
Researchers have identified British coins bearing the inscription of King Cunobelin mixed in with a hoard of Roman coins discovered in a field in Bunnik, near Utrecht, Netherlands, in October 2023. This was the first mixed composition coin collection found on mainland Europe, apparently deliberately buried it in a cloth or leather pouch over two thousand years ago. The hoard is now on display at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
Gert-Jan Messelaar and Reinier Koelink, amateur archaeologists, found the 44 British gold coins, known as staters, among 360 Roman coins that are said to have amounted to 11 years in wages for an ordinary Roman soldier. Romans prepared to cross to Britain from where the archaeologists found the coins, and it may have been where they returned to Europe. A soggy area and a nearby water-bearing channel, unsuitable for habitation and agriculture, probably contained the pit where whoever it was who buried the coins.
The Coins.
The British coins bear the name of a Celtic king known as Cunobelinus, Cunobeline or Cunobelin, immortalized by Shakespeare as Cymbeline, who ruled southeastern Britain between 5 and 40 AD. Four staters are called posthumous issues, probably struck by Cunobelinus’s successors as ruler of the Catuvellauni tribe, the brothers Togodumnus and Caratacus, in about 43 AD.
Of the Roman coins, 72 are gold aurei, a high value currency, and 288 are silver denarii, dating from 200 BC to AD 47. The most recent coins in the hoard, struck in 46-47 AD, bear the portrait of the Emperor Claudius. Identical marks on the Claudius coins suggest they were struck in a single batch. Among other silver pieces are Roman coins from the time of Julius Caesar, and one features Juba, the king of Numidia in modern Algeria (Juba I died at the battle of Zama in 46 BC; Juba II died in 23 AD).
Rome Invades Britain III.
When Claudius ordered Aulus Plautius to invade Britain in 43 AD with four legions (between 10 and 25,000 men) and 20,000 auxiliaries, the island comprised several kingdoms. Caratacus and Togodumnus of the Catuvellauni tribe had been leading attacks on the Atrebates tribe, who had political and trading links with the Romans, extending the area of influence of the anti-Roman Catuvellauni further westwards from their homelands north of the River Thames. The first stage of this conquest was complete in about 50 AD.
Buried and Forgotten? Possible but Unlikely.
The coins may have been part of the spoils from the third Roman invasion of Britain (the first two, under Caesar, were in 55 and 54 BC), or they may have been a monetary gift (donativum) after a successful campaign. Some scholars believe returning Romans buried the coins, but it is also plausible that the coins did not belong to soldiers, and that whoever it was may not have taken them from or even to Britain. It’s just as possible that it was part of a merchant’s or a smuggler’s fortune—coins circulated in the ancient world like they do now. Some were ancient even for the time, and one is from faraway Africa.
Face it: it’s eleven years’ pay for a Legionnaire. It’s a retirement fund for whoever held it…if it belonged to an individual, which seems unlikely. It does not feel likely that this was an official payment means, but something pulled together in some haste with little regard to value, concentrating on bulk. Perhaps they intended it for something secret, like a bribe or ransom, and the receivers buried it for safekeeping before someone imprisoned, enslaved, or killed them, leaving it for the 21st Century to find. We can’t say now, but it is the job of the scholar to ask such questions, even if they have no answers.
The Persistent Past: Discovering The Steele Diaries
What we have for “history” is based partly on what we know, partly on what we believe, and partly on what we, well, guess at. When Curtis Durand finds a trunk-full of old diaries, papers and memorabilia from a General the history books have never heard of, what’s he supposed to do? Work the source, that’s what.
The origins of a steamer trunk full of historical source material (or of useless old paper) can be just as elusive as that of a hoard of coins found in a Dutch bog. The story of both is how your history books are written.
And Finally...
On 24 January:
41 AD: Officers from the Praetorian Guard murder Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known as Caligula, his wife and infant daughter on Palatine Hill in Rome. His paternal uncle, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known as Claudius to history, became Emperor.
1950: Percy L. Spencer of the Raytheon Manufacturing Company is granted a patent entitled “A Method For Heating Foodstuffs.” Spencer’s patent and subsequent developments made the microwave oven more practical than the 750-pound behemoth marketed to commercial establishments since 1957.
And today is MACINTOSH COMPUTER DAY, commemorating this day in 1984 when the first Macs went on sale in California. Underpowered, lacking software and memory (a whopping 128k) and priced at as much as a good used car, sales met early expectations but dropped off.