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Boudicca's gold hoard unearthed
The largest hoard of prehistoric gold coins in Britain in modern times has been discovered by a metal detectorist in East Anglia. The 824 gold staters, worth the modern equivalent of up to £1m when they were in circulation, were in a field near Wickham Market, Suffolk. Almost all the coins were minted by royal predecessors of Boudicca, the warrior queen of the Iceni tribe who revolted against Rome in AD 60.
The solid gold staters – each weighing just over five grams – were made between 40BC and AD 15, most of them in the final 35 years of that period. They were buried in a plain, wheel-thrown pottery vessel, possibly inside some sort of rectilinear religious compound, between 15 and AD 20. Although it has not yet been proved, it is likely that the hoard represented part of the accumulated wealth of an individual or community and that it was buried as a votive offering at a time of a political stress, drought or other natural disaster.
Although this is the first major Icenian gold coin hoard found, the tribe did have a tradition of making votive offerings of other gold objects. At one of their major religious centres, Snettisham in northern Norfolk, the tribe buried at least 30kg of gold and silver jewellery, mainly neck and arm torcs. Significantly, these were also buried within a rectilinear enclosure.
The new discovery is particularly important because it highlights the probable political, economic and religious importance of an area on the southern fringe of Icenian territory, near its border with the neighbouring Trinovantian tribal kingdom. The Wickham Market area of south-east Suffolk where the hoard was found seems to have been of great importance in Iron Age times. Within just a few miles of the find spot are two other important Iron Age sites. The larger was a vast, triple-ditched, quasi-urban centre where metal and textile manufacturers worked, with evidence of mysterious rituals, involving human skulls.
The second site was a probable market where dozens of Iron Age silver and silver-plated, mainly Icenian coins, have been found over the years.
"The [new] hoard is absolutely unique," said Ian Leins, the British Museum's curator of Iron Age coins. "It is the largest hoard of British Iron Age gold coins to be studied in its entirety."
The find is the most substantial Iron Age gold coin hoard discovered in Britain since 1849, when a farm worker unearthed between 800 and 2,000 gold staters in a field near Milton Keynes.
The latest coins themselves bear an assortment of motifs, most of which were derived ultimately from Macedonian coins minted by Alexander the Great's father, Philip II in the 4th century BC. Nearly all bear images of horses portrayed in a highly stylised Celtic manner, totally different from the motif's distant Macedonian precursor. But one motif – two crescent moons – which appears on almost half the coins are a purely Icenian numismatic device, possibly associated with the importance of the moon in Iron Age Druidic religion.
To protect the site, archaeologists from Suffolk County Council kept the discovery under wraps for months while they made secret excavations, funded by the British Museum. The area was thoroughly investigated using advanced metal detection equipment to ensure all the coins had been retrieved before the discovery was announced.
It was this excavation, directed by archaeologists John Newman and Jude Plouviez, that led to the discovery of Iron Age and Romano-British earthworks (potentially a sacred enclosure) near where the metal detectorist had found the gold coins.
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