Analysis of Coin Hoards from Roman BritainBy Historia
Since the enactment of the Treasure Act 1996, the U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has published the "Treasure Annual Report" once a year, a listing of all the larger finds of coins and artefacts of all periods, that have been discovered during each year. There have been four reports to date. Together they list over a hundred finds of Roman coins, the vast majority being hoards, rather than casual losses.
From these publications, the quantity of coins for each hoard has been collated in three tables in an attempt understand the underlying pattern of hoarding in Roman Britain in relation to the political and economic changes that took place. A good starting point is the small book "Romano-British Coin Hoards" by Richard Abdy, one of the contributors to the Treasure Annual Report, and this has been referred to extensively for this article.
ContentsThe Roman economy and hoarding
Analysis of the Treasure Report Hoards
The following appear in a new window for ease of reference:
Table 1 showing Roman coin finds up to 180 A.D.
Table 2 showing Roman coin finds 180 A.D. to 305 A.D.
Table 3 showing Roman coin finds from 305 A.D. on.
Maps and Geographical Distribution.
The generally accepted theory of the 'invention' of coins is that they were effectively slugs of silver or gold bullion with 'official' markings on them to guarantee their weight and fineness. This meant that coins had an intrinsic value; that is to say they were worth the value of the metal they were made of (which was meant to be the same as the 'face' value). That had the advantage that the coins were very negotiable. Even if coins had been officially de-monetised, they were worth their weight in silver or gold and could be used for payment, at least until such time as they found their way to the mint.
The first priority of Roman emperors and their officials was to find the money to pay their 'expenses', with the well-being of the general economy a poor second. Although we talk about coins being "issued", what we mean is that wealth, in the form of precious metal, was turned into coins with the sole purpose of being spent -on the army, new palaces, bribes and scribes, etc. Thus the expansion of new territories meant more captured silver and gold which could finance the building of new temples to the glory of Rome, and fortuitously a shot in the arm for the economy of the Empire. This happy state of affairs lasted lasted in the Roman Empire until around the end of the second century A.D.
However, the Empire could not expand forever and nor could the supply of precious metal. The conquered peoples sought to get their territory back; 'barbarians' started to move in. The emperors needed money to fight them and there was only so much that could be extorted from tax-payers. The Roman silver denarius was based on a weight of 1/96th of a Roman Pound. To make each Pound of silver go further the silver was diluted with a base metal, such as copper, a process known as 'de-basement'. Thus they could get more denarii from the same amount of silver. The problem was that an old denarius then had a higher intrinsic value than a new denarius, even though they both had the same face value. This period of de-basement caused it's own problems and affected the pattern of hoarding.
Gold coins in the Roman period were never, or rarely ever, de-based but their size and hence their weight were changed. This was partly to retain a fixed relationship between gold and silver, but this was hardly ever achieved for long as the bullion values of the two metals would eventually diverge, and gold coins remained effectively bullion.
The act of hoarding in ancient times is popularly thought to be the hiding away of particularly valuable items, and especially older gold and silver coins that may have increased in value due to the de-basement of newer coins. However, a little thought should cause us to modify that theory. Firstly, from Republican times to the end of of the second century, the weight and fineness of the denarius was fa