A hoard of British coins bearing the inscription of King Cunobelin and found in a Dutch field have been identified as very likely to be the spoils of war of a Roman soldier from the conquest of Britain.
The 44 gold coins, known as staters, were discovered alongside 360 Roman coins, by two amateur archaeologists with metal detectors in a field in Bunnik, near Utrecht. The coins are believed to have been given as military pay.
The staters bear the name of the British Celtic king also known as Cunobelinus, immortalised by Shakespeare as Cymbeline in the play of that name, who reigned between AD5 and AD40 in the south-east of Britain.
Analysis of what is the first mixed composition collection found on mainland Europe suggests the coins were deliberately buried in a shallow pit and stored in a cloth or leather pouch.
The coins, which were found at less than 30cm below the surface of the soil, are said to amount to 11 years in wages for an ordinary Roman soldier.
Four of the British staters are regarded as posthumous issues, probably struck by Cunobelinus’s successors as ruler of the Catuvellauni tribe, the brothers Togodumnus and Caratacus, at approximately AD43.
The wide chronological range of the coins suggests they were not selected based on quality, gold content or weight but removed from circulation in a single event, consistent with being spoils from the early Roman conquest of Britain under the general Aulus Plautius (AD43-47).
The coins may have been distributed to the army as a donativum, a monetary gift often given to soldiers in the Roman army as a reward after a successful campaign, according to the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, where they are on show.
Of the Roman coins, 72 are gold aurei, a high value currency, and 288 are silver denarii. They date from approximately 200BC to AD47. The most recent coins in the hoard, struck in AD46-47, bear the portrait of the emperor Claudius.
The identical marks of those coins suggest they were minted as part of a single batch. Among the silver pieces are Roman coins from the time of Julius Caesar and one features Juba, the king of Numidia, in north-west Africa, present-day Algeria.
The find was made by Gert-Jan Messelaar and Reinier Koelink in October 2023. They discovered 381 coins and a second excavation by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands uncovered a further 23. “We opened a bottle of champagne,” recalled Messelaar of the original discovery. “You never find this.”
The area where the coins were discovered was a site from which the Romans had prepared for first crossing to Britain. It now appears that it was also an area to which the conquering troops returned when back on the mainland.
The pit in which the coins were probably buried would have been dug in a soggy area and close to a water-bearing channel that would have been unsuitable for habitation and agriculture.
Anton Cruysheer, from the Utrecht Landscape and Heritage Foundation, said: “This is the first time that physical evidence of the return of the troops has been found. Apparently they came back with all sorts of things. That is new information.”
Britain consisted of several separate kingdoms before Claudius ordered Aulus Plautius to invade with a force of four legions reinforced by a further 20,000 auxiliary soldiers.
Caratacus and Togodumnus 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.
