COIN HOARDS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE: A LONG-RANGE PERSPECTIVE. SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

Abstract

This paper draws on data gathered by two projects, the British Museum/Leicester Hoards project, which gathered records of 3,223 hoards of Iron Age and Roman coins from Britain, and the Oxford Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire project, which is gathering data on Roman coin hoards from across the Roman Empire, to make long-range comparisons of hoarding across different parts of the Empire by century. It adopts a broad-brush approach as the Oxford project is still gathering data. The paper sets out the number of hoards recorded from each country from the reign of Augustus to the end of the fifth century and it shows that Luxembourg, followed by England and Israel have the highest number of coin hoards; it then considers the various factors governing the recovery and recording of hoards and the method of discovery of finds, before examining the chronological distribution of hoarding over the first to fifth centuries. Overall, the third century saw the highest proportion of coin hoards, followed by the fourth century, but there are very wide differences between the hoarding patterns of different countries. Hoards from beyond the frontier are also considered. A final section compares hoarding patterns with single finds of gold coins and suggests avenues for further research.