Dan Snow's History Hit - Discovered! Rare Celtic Coins in the New Forest

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

In a special episode of the podcast, Dan and his team hit the road after receiving a call about the discovery of a hoard of rare Iron Age coins, at a secret location in the New Forest. At the St Barbe Museum in Lymington, Dan speaks to the detectorists who made the discovery of a lifetime and to Professor Emeritus Tony King about what these coins and their unusual imagery tell us about Britain's Celtic ancestors and civilization before the Romans arrived. It's important for the local community that such a discovery can stay in the area. St Barbe Museum + Art Gallery in Lymington are appealing for help to secure and exhibit this exciting hoard of Celtic Coins in the museum. Support their Celtic Countdown where all donations will be match funded. One donation, twice the impact. https://bit.ly/3D1kgb2

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. This is a very exciting podcast because I went out into the real world.

I had a hashtag IRL experience in real life. Me and Hannah and Jana, my Intrepid podcasting team, we went down to the south coast of England, a place between the low-lying heathland of the New Forest and the glistening sea of the Channel, a place called Limington. Daniel Defoe visited in the early 18th century and he wrote about it, smuggling and roguing is the reigning commerce on this part of the English coast. Roguing is the reigning commerce on this part of the English coast. Roguing, what a great verb. Love that. And perhaps roguing had something to do with the topic of today's podcast. Because we dashed down to the coast, Team History Hit did, to respond to an emergency, a heritage emergency.

A fantastic coin hoard has recently been found very near Limington. It belongs, to quote Indiana Jones, in a museum. It belongs in the local museum, near to where it was found very near Limington. It belongs, to quote Indiana Jones, in a museum. It belongs in the local museum, near to where it was found, near to where it was buried. But the museum needed to raise some money, so Team History went down and kick-started those fundraising efforts. We spoke in this podcast, in the museum, St. Barb Museum in Limington, we spoke to the three wonderful metal detectors who not only found the coins in a secret location in the New Forest, but behaved impeccably in accordance with the law and made sure that archaeologists were present for their excavation. We then talked to Professor

Emeritus Tony King, who's a professor of Roman archaeology at Winchester University. You'll hear from him after the ad break. And I also talked to young kids from Priestland, the local secondary school, who are young curators at the museum. The coin hoard is particularly fascinating because it's a hoard of coins that were minted and probably buried before the Emperor Claudius sent his Roman invasion to occupy and colonise Southern Britain.

These coins are designed and created by our Celtic forebears. Now, I'm very stupid. This is not, as they say, my period. I didn't really know that Britain had a thriving coin-based economy before the Romans arrived. I was all a bit in that embarrassingly traditional school of historiography that says that the Brits were all kind of hopeless until the Romans arrived and brought the great blessings of civilization to this island. But no, these coins are extraordinary. They contain images of nature, of the gods, of suns crossing the sky, of people, migrants, crossing the channel in small boats. It really is surprisingly moving to see these coins. And it was a reminder that so much about our lives, the geography, our culture and politics, hasn't actually changed that much in 2,000 years. We're still working out

ways to trade, to exchange, to cross this strip of water that separates us from the channel and possibly to stop other people crossing it. These are a superb collection of coins that give us an insight into the minds of our Celtic forebears, an opportunity to read beyond, to see beyond the hard punctuation mark of the Roman arrival. If you'd like to help keep these wonderful coins in the area in which they were found, in the area in which they were buried,

then you can do so by going to the Big Give. It's a special campaign. It means that for the next five days, every pound that you donate will be doubled. So please, please, please head over to the Big Give and look for Celtic Countdown. Support the St. Barb Museum. We really appreciate that.

You can check out pictures, look at videos of the coin hoard on my Twitter and Instagram, on the History Guy or on the History Facebook page. Please go and check it out. In the meantime, though, thank you to the wonderful metal detectors. Thanks to the museum. Thanks to Professor Tony King for coming on the podcast. Enjoy.

Can we introduce ourselves and our role here? So let's start with you. Well, I'm Kit Lehman, and I'm a detectorist, like these other two rogues. Perfect. Gary Eveley, one of the finders of the Nursling Horde. Alvin Robinson, also one of the finders and detectorists. Listen, first things first.

Congratulations. This is the most exciting thing. All those hours in the rain. I see you guys walking around. I'm in the pub. I'm driving past. I think, ha, they'll never find find anything but you've absolutely nailed it must be incredibly exciting yeah it took about three billion hours as you can imagine so quite a lot of wasted time well it's not wasted is it uh no no it isn't but you know many many days you wonder what on earth you're doing out there. It is immensely exciting.

Of course, we didn't know when we uncovered it how exciting it was. We knew it was an Iron Age hoard. But some of those coins are actually unique. And many of them are of extreme rarity. So we were very lucky. You thought it was Iron Age straight away. How do you know that? The first coins that came up were typical Duratrig status.

We knew straight away it was Iron Age. We just didn't know how much was there. Obviously, we have to play by the rules and we can't touch it. So we didn't find out until the next day when the archaeologists came to dig it up. And even then we didn't know what it looked like until they were clean. So it's been exciting for months seeing the process happen. Is this your first rodeo? Have you made big breakthroughs before? Or was this kind of your first really big, exciting find? This is any detectorist's dream, once in a lifetime. You just want to throw your detector away now. I hope you won't.

Yes. Well, as you say, it only comes up once in a lifetime, and it is very exciting. We have found single coins, many of them, but there's nothing like a hoard. That's what a detectorist dreams of. That's what we dream of, and particularly a pre-Roman hoard. It's crazy. Were you looking, obviously, it's a secret location, guys, but were you looking at a particular place, like a sort of ancient crossroads or a i don't know some kind of particular route or is this just you guys grids growing the country and just going through one place at a time funny story really um i waste many hours on google earth and i was wasting many hours on google earth and i sort of managed to find a 25 meter radius circle in this particular

field. Just scrolling through Google Earth images suddenly one of the ears I thought that's a definite ring. So I printed it off and made my proclamation the next day this could be a Celtic dwelling. Lots of giggling and Mickey taking by Alvin and Kit. Food's a laughter, I would say, but you were right, Gary. Yeah, and they nicknamed it the Celtic Field, and I think it was several weeks after that we discovered the big find. That's interesting. It suggests that we think maybe someone associated with that house,

the owner of that house, it was their valuablesables and they just squirreled it away. Well, nobody quite knows. A lot of doctorates and a lot of ink has been spilled over why they buried hordes. It may have been the Romans are coming over the hill, quick fellows into the ground, we'll come back after the battle. And of course, they didn't. Or it may have been some religious function. And we still don't know. But every little piece makes historians a bit more sure of what our ancestors were up to. What's it like that first moment when you're uncovering that hoard? And you know, that has not been disturbed for thousands of years. That's a direct link to, as you say, our ancestors.

Unbelievable. You never expect it to happen. Me and Kit were together the first time it happened and it was, I can only imagine, like winning the lottery. Not as in the fact we've won lots of money, it's just you never think you're going to see something like that. We find the Ardoroman coin and ring pulls and junk. But to find a mass of coins was just incredible. There's a great moment when you think,

who was the last person to touch this coin a few hundred years before Christ was walking on this earth? That is quite a moment. What's it all mean? I mean, you've got Google Earth there. The machinery is getting better and better. Are we going to find this kind of stuff regularly now? Are things changing rapidly? Without a doubt. The detecting machines are far superior than they were in the 70s. I mean, I started in the 70s and gave up. Must have been a child.

I mean, I started in the 70s and gave up. Must have been a child. Yeah, it was just hard work. And the machines were pretty awful. And I only took it up again because a friend said, have you tried the new Deus? And I said, what on earth is that? He said, go and get one.

It's amazing. It's just an amazing piece of kit. And he was bang on. We call ourselves the Deus Trio because we've all got a deus machine and they are deadly if there's a coin there you'll find it deus ex machina and so you've said you might as well hang up your deus now but i suspect you probably won't you're going to keep going i mean do you think there's more finds of this nature around that are there to be found without a doubt um if you waste another couple of thousand hours you may find something else else. But obviously a hoard is great and a silver hoard is fantastic,

but the greedy side of me wants a golden hoard. Here he goes, lads. Crikey. Nothing's good enough for this guy, eh? Yeah. That's the ambition. That's what will find us. Yeah, but it really is when you dig a Celtic coin

and you put it in your hand and the thought that 2070 years ago, somebody placed that coin in that hole. It's like, wow, mind blowing. And lastly, I guess it's exciting that we're fundraising that it can be kept in the local area. That's very special. That is very special. And it's very nice that we've been able to do that. Of course, there is a system, the treasure system, and we've stuck to the rules scrupulously.

A number of detectorists don't, I believe, but we have, and the system has played fair with us, and we've managed to get it to come to the local museum, and that's wonderful. I know I feel weird congratulating someone for obeying the law but thank you for all the rest of us out there because I know it's easy not to and we all appreciate that. Actually there's thousands of detectorists that do

and there's hundreds of thousands of pieces in the British Museum going through the process now and without those detectorists we wouldn't be able to piece the history together. Absolutely absolutely well people like you give the pastime a really good name so thank you for all our history fans out there well we're in our toasty homes you guys are coming up with a good thing that's more about our past so thank you and congratulations guys come and join us one day well i might do when the sun's out thank you you. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're going to be back in a moment. You're going to hear from Professor Tony King about what these incredible coins

really mean and how important this find is. And if you want to check out the coins, please head to our History Hit Facebook page to watch the live stream that we recorded while we're in the museum. tangled sum of hundreds and thousands, in fact, of stories of life across ancient Eurasia. We've got the big names. The Romans, of course, become so powerful and the Romans conquer the whole of the Mediterranean world. And Hannibal was the one who challenged the Romans the most. We've got the big discoveries. And these are the only surviving boxing gloves from the Roman Empire.

And we even have some groundbreaking new archaeological detective stories. Baths of Cleopatra. I had never come across any such thing before. Subscribe to The Ancients on History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, hello everybody. Welcome to this very special live stream from St. Barb Museum in Limington, one of the great museums of Britain. I'm here with Professor Tony King. How are you, Tony? I'm very well, thank you. Excited with this hoard. Well, we're going to tell everyone about that. We are recording a live stream for you guys to learn more about this hoard, but we're also going to record a podcast. You're going to watch basically one of my

podcasts being recorded live. We don't do this very often, so it's a bit of a exciting thing but I want to do it tonight because we've got a special message which is to keep this hoard here in Limington where it was discovered to show it off properly to curate it and exhibit it properly we do need to raise some money for this brilliant museum otherwise the local people won't be able to enjoy this extraordinary local hoard so please please please google St Museum Hoards Celtic Countdown from tomorrow. All of your donations will be doubled. Very, very exciting indeed. I'm going to put the link in the information below as well.

So please head over and do that. In the meantime, let's get underway. Tony, thank you very much for coming on and talking me through this amazing hoard. What are we looking at here? Well, it's just a small selection from about 270 coins from a hoard that was found three years ago. And we actually think it's two hoards rather than one because there were two groups of coins found a few meters apart from each other. And they're slightly different dates as well. So when do we think these were buried, around about?

Round about the end of the first century BC or the beginning of the first century AD. Okay. Beginning of the first century BC makes them pre-Roman. Yes. Oh, absolutely. These are so-called Celtic coins or Iron Age coins. They're being made by people who were here before the Roman conquest. They're the local coins. Tony, I am going to really admit my stupidity here. I didn't know Brits were minting coins before the Romans arrived. Oh, yes, they were, and particularly in the south. And they were minting coins in order to perhaps pay their mercenary soldiers and things like that. These are quite valuable coins at the time. They tend to be of gold or silver. And so you couldn't just go out and buy a loaf of bread.

They are too valuable. And there was no change. You couldn't get change either. So they're probably what we call bullion. In other words, they were minted for their value in gold and silver. But they're incredibly intricate. This is something that I thought was beyond the technological capacity of Britain's pre-Rome. I mean, for how many generations had the Brits been making coins of this sophistication? Well, from about 100 BC at least, and probably earlier. So they were made a bit earlier on the other side of the channel, and then the technology came across the channel and into South East Britain in the late Iron Age. And they were very sophisticated metal workers.

They knew exactly how to make really good quality things like swords and mirrors and things like that. And also all of these coins. The first thing that strikes me looking at these coins, there are no emperors, kings, queens, gods on these coins, are there? There are gods on them. Oh, there are gods. Let's have a look at one. And this is perhaps one of the earliest ones in the hoard. And this has probably got the sun god on it.

And on the other side, it's got solar symbolism. It's the journey of the sun through the sky during the day. And what they thought is it went back on a boat in the night to get to the dawn again in order to rise the next day. The boat is shown at the bottom of the coin. That's these wavy lines here. And the horse is the thing that's dragging the sun chariot across the sky. So when we say we don't know anything about Celtic pre-Roman gods in Britain,

the Druids, that's not true. These coins actually do give us an insight into their belief systems. Yes, an extraordinary insight as well. And we've got some which are gods and that sort of thing. And we've got others, which if we have a look at this one, which is a very tiny coin, it's actually got another boat on it. It's got a boat with some people on it. And these are probably the people who came across the channel during the first century BC to settle and sort of invade Britain at the same time. So this is a sort of political coin, not so much a religious coin. So they have messages. They have propaganda messages and everything. I don't want to get too

overexcited, but images of actual human beings from before the Romans were in Britain, I didn't think we had those. I mean, those are images of our Celtic ancestors. But admittedly, they look a bit like blobs, don't they, unfortunately. You haven't seen my drawings. It's fought to represent people. Yes, absolutely. And so you think that when Julius Caesar came across on his raids or invasions of 50-ish BC, the first time Roman armies come to these shores, they might have levied tribute or something. We might have had to start minting coins to send over to Roman authorities. Yes, the historical records tell us that Julius Caesar exacted tribute. In effect, he said, Britain has surrendered to Rome and we need some money from you.

And this coin, the gold coin in particular, may have been minted around 54 BC or a little bit later in order to pay that tribute to the Romans. Eventually, they stopped paying it. It's one of the things that led to all the lead up to the invasion in 43 AD. Oh, I see. led to all the lead up to the invasion in 43 AD. Oh, I see. So the fact that the Brits stopped paying these coins to Rome is one of the reasons Claudius invaded. In a way, yes.

It's a long story, though. It's a long and complicated story. Inevitably, inevitably. The intricacy on some of these ones is absolutely extraordinary. These are gold and silver? There's only one gold coin in the hoard, and that's this one, which is probably the earliest. And nearly all the rest are silver.

in the hoard and that's this one which is probably the earliest and nearly all the rest are silver and this one in particular that's what we call number 157 it's a new unique coin so there are some coins which have never been seen before in this hoard now this hoard was found by amateur archaeologists metal detectorists absolutely yes it's a secret location obviously but is there anything about where it was buried that gives us a sense of what perhaps it was doing there? Well, it was found in a place that might be on the boundary between two Iron Age tribes. And the one to the west are the Deerotrigues, always difficult words to pronounce, and they give their name to Dorset. Dorset is actually a direct descendant of that name, Deir Etregais. The people to the east are the people called the Atropartes,

and they were incomers. There's another part of the tribe of the Atropartes on the other side of a channel, around the town of Amiens in northern France. And it looks as though people were coming in during the first century BC and the boundary between the Deer-a-Tree-Gays and the Atrobaties may have shifted west. And the new forest was originally in the territory of the Deer-a-Tree-Gays, in other words in what is now Dorset, but it ended up being in what is now Hampshire. And that may have happened during the Roman period. So that's quite an interesting change in political affiliation, possible fighting.

There may well have been fighting in this area in the late part of the 1st century BC. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Tony, but there's kind of two or three big reasons people bury coins. One is because the enemy at the gates and you want to hide all your stuff. Yep. Another one is perhaps religious. It is an offering.

Is that something that you've come across? We think a lot of the Iron Age halls are actually offerings, so votive deposits of one sort perhaps religious. It is an offering. Is that something that you've come across? We think a lot of the Iron Age hoards are actually offerings. So they're votive deposits of one sort or another. And the fact that there are two hoards here and also a silver ingot, which was found in a slightly different location but fairly close by, I think they're all religious deposits being put in this place because they wanted to placate the gods and make these offerings. You're obviously academic, you know all about these coins and you're steeped

in it. Is it really handy that people are now coming into you going, well, I'm a metal director and I've just found this one. I mean, the hordes are coming in thick and fast at the moment. There's been a real revolution over the last 20 years and the portable antiquities scheme as run by the British Museum has allowed us to see literally thousands of new coins from the Iron Age and of course the Roman period as well and it's completely changed our ideas about what is going on the sophistication of these people the amount of trade and that sort of thing that was obviously going on and these things were used for trade because they were valuable and must have been used for trading for perhaps luxury goods like wine and that sort of thing, which is coming in from the Roman Empire. You mustn't forget that

after 54 BC, the boundary of the Roman Empire was the English Channel. And we here in Hampshire during the late Iron Age were outside it for about 100 years before Claudius invaded. And because we were on the edge of a Roman empire, all these goods were coming up and being imported into Britain. And some of these coins were used for paying for them. Tony, we're talking about cross-channel trade. We're talking about people coming across in small boats, talking about being on the edge of it. It sounds like we're having a very contemporary conversation, yet this is going on 2,000 years ago. It's extraordinary.

Yeah, some of them were refugees in boats, of course. It seems to resonate with today. Was the silver and gold we're seeing used here, were they from the isles, the British Isles where we are now? That's a very interesting and quite difficult question to answer. Probably yes. The gold might well have been earlier items from, say, the Bronze Age, melted down and remade into coins.

And that's easily the case. If you think about it, some of the gold objects that we've got today, you know, wedding rings and all the rest of it, unless it's newly mined gold, it could easily be something that's been recycled many hundreds of times and go right back to the bronze age or something like that and that's a fascinating thought something that you may have around your finger had been used once thousands of years ago could have sat alongside that coin there yeah given all these coin odds being found do you think it's important

that what we're doing it's like trying to keep them in the area and display them there is well it's really important otherwise they would all go somewhere central would they yes the main place in the country of course is the British Museum and that has got quite a lot of these coin hordes and individual finds and all the rest of it but very few of them are on display and the policy of trying to get the coin hordes local to where they're found is, to my mind, a really good idea. And that's what we ought to be doing. And it means that people in this area can see and understand what was going on 2,000 years ago. I live in this area and I'm very excited. I thought, you know, the Romans brought coins and I'm feeling altogether more positive about my Celtic ancestors.

You said this coin is completely new. You've never seen it before. What does this hoard in general, what has it told you about Celtic ancestors. You said this coin is completely new, you've never seen it before. What does this hoard in general, what has it told you about Celtic Britain, about this part of the world? What can we learn from it? One of the things about the New Forest is we tend to think of it as a rather blank area because there hasn't been much archaeology found here and now we're finding more and more. We now know that there's a lot of activity in this part of southern Britain and that Iron Age peoples were here. They were probably fighting against each other.

They were probably establishing big marketplaces. They were establishing temples. And we get a sense of the sophistication of these people. And as you say, these are not for small purchase, but there's a coin-based economy going on, which implies, well, a sophistication there. Yeah, and in fact, okay, they're valuable coins, but there probably was a trade which used these coins. We know that at the time of Caesar and a little bit after,

they were trading with the Roman Empire in slaves. One of these coins could probably purchase a slave. Really? Or a few of the could probably purchase a slave. Really? Or a few of the coins would purchase a slave. And it has been suggested that fighting in Britain, which is just beyond the edge of the Roman Empire, they would take prisoners of war if they were fighting against each other. And those prisoners of war would then be traded into the Roman Empire as slaves. That's extraordinary thought. Now let's talk a little bit more about some of these individual coins. You cast your eye

over these coins. Do you know what everything is or their mysteries here? That's unravel there are definite mysteries to unravel the one I said that was a new type It's enlarged here and this has got solar imagery on it as well You can see the Sun with the rays of the Sun sticking out there You see those crescents for as a crescent moons. This thing, the line and two dots along the sides might be a rainbow. That's very cool. And when was this coined from? This is probably about 20 to 10 BC, maybe 10 AD, that sort of time. So again, before the Roman, the Claudian invasion.

Oh, absolutely. Yes. The other side of it's got a horse and you can see the horse, you can see its ears, You can see its snout. And that's looking very clear, aren't you? Why do you think some cultures put important men on coins and others put horses and nature motifs? That's interesting. Perhaps they didn't want to depict their kings or their leaders. But later on they do. Well, they mention their names.

The later coins, which are after the date of these hordes, just before the Roman conquest, they get literate, as it were, and they put their names on. So you get V-E-R, which we know was Verica, who was the person who actually asked the Romans to invade in 43 AD. Okay, how did that go? Okay, let's look at some other coins here what about this one here well this again has got a horse on it i'm going to have to turn this one around and you can see the head you can see the neck that's the body that's its two front legs and we've got what looks like a spear these may be wheels for a chariot and that sort of thing

amazing isn't it so you're able to recognise these? Well, I'm not a real Iron Age coin expert and I defer to other people for that, but I do recognise these. And I've been working at another temple site, which is in eastern Hampshire on Haling Island, and that's got hundreds of coins, which are very similar to this as well.

And technology means we're going to be finding more and more of these. Yes. As I say, we're in a golden age of discovery. And the fact we've got the portable antiquities scheme, which pays for face value of the coins. Well, not the face value. We don't know what the face value is. What we are can face value.

Let's say the modern value of the coins. And that means that they're not sold into the antiquities trade and we never know where they came from and all the information's lost that's what's important for for me as an archaeologist is to get the the background information that they were all found together they're a horde we know the fine spot although we we're not going to disclose it it's secret investigations ongoing yeah exactly and you don't see this coming to a stop anytime soon know the fine spot, although we're not going to disclose it. It's not, it's a secret. Investigations ongoing. Yeah, exactly.

And you don't see this coming to a stop anytime soon. There's still plenty out there. Well, I think it will eventually tail off. But I think at the moment, there are finds by the thousand every year. What a time to be alive, isn't it cool? And there are also lots of excavations, of course, going on. It's a golden age for archaeology in general, actually, with projects in advance of big projects like HS2 and all the rest of it have produced some fantastic finds.

Were they made in a very similar way to the way they were made in Roman Britain? Did our Celtic ancestors have completely different ways of making coins, or were they borrowing importing European methods? Both. That's the typical academic answer, isn't it, to say both. What they were doing is they were probably making blanks by casting them in little molds. So they would make a blank, but then they would have a die which had the design on it, and then they would strike it. And striking coins is what the Romans did, and the Greeks. That's how they did it. They didn't

cast them, they struck them. They had a little thing called an anvil, which had one design on it. Then they had the other bit, and they put the blank in between, and they hit it with a hammer. And the other way is to pour liquid into a cast, isn't it? It is. And often Roman forgery coins are cast because they, in case of using clay, take a copy of, well, usually a Roman coin rather than one of these. Oh, I see. That's clever. Yeah. Some of these coins, I'm not sure whether any of them out here, have been tested by being cut.

I wanted to see whether they were solid all the way through. So people were interested in knowing were these true coins or were they forgeries? Sorry, they weren't cut in the British Museum last week. No, no, no. 2,000 years ago, they were cut in case it's a base metal. Yeah. And you do get base metal coins with just a skin of gold or silver around the outside of it.

Cheeky. Even in the Iron Age. Is that why people do that strange thing at the Olympics? They'll have that picture taken. Yeah, this is a genuine medal. Yes. It's not just made of chocolate. Tony, that is incredibly exciting.

We've got the young curators of Limington Town here. Anything you guys want to ask? What's your name? Amelia. Amelia, let's take it away. Go, what's your question? Okay, I was wondering, could any of the coins actually have been lost?

Or what were they really found in? They were all found together and the finders said that they're in a sort of stack together. So they're probably in a container of some sort and that container was probably fabric or leather or something like that. And that, of course, has decayed. So it's no longer there. Amelia, can you come to all my jobs?

Because that's a question I should have asked straight at the beginning. So thank you for reminding me of that. Are you sure someone doesn't drop them? I mean, honestly, I'm an idiot. Thank you, Amelia, for sorting me out there. Any other young curator questions? What's your name? Tom.

I was just going to ask, at school we were learning about Anglo-Saxon mints and how they cause taxation and stuff. Was taxation at the time these coins were used? The tribute to Caesar is taxation, isn't it, in a way? But probably there were powerful tribes and less powerful tribes, and the less powerful tribes probably had to pay some sort of tax to the bigger ones. It happens. Yeah, it certainly happened on the other side of the channel in ancient Gaul, but we don't know for sure whether it happened in britain my guess is it probably did oh yeah here we go another one what's your name um amber who would have owned these coins who would have dropped them or whatever i think question i

think ordinary people of the tribe or whatever he wanted to call themselves probably didn't own these coins and we know from what caesar says and various other ancient writers that they had a sort of stratified society with a king with warriors and priests and people like that at the top and then a lot of people who were farmers and herdsmen and so on, underneath. And then there were slaves as well. Definitely, the Iron Age people owned their own slaves. And it's for people at the top who probably had possession of these coins and were making offerings of them. As I say, I think it's a religious hoard.

They were willing to give away all their wealth because it's quite a valuable hoard in the Iron Age. And they were saying, the gods deserve these coins more than we do which is quite interesting amazing yeah thank you very much for coming on the podcast and talking to us all about it it's a pleasure i feel we have the history on our shoulders all this tradition of ours our school history our songs this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake.

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