An extraordinary Roman hoard from Utrecht
A cache of Roman and British coins found in the Netherlands seems to be associated with the emperor Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD 43. Study of the hoard is shedding new light on the circumstances surrounding this major historical event. Matthew Symonds found out more from Jasper de Bruin.
In October 2023, two metal detectorists began searching a field in the Bunnik region of Utrecht province. On the face of it, their target was not a promising one for Roman-era finds. Although the wider region had been home to a significant military presence as part of the Lower German frontier or limes, the field in question was far removed from any known Roman-era sites. It was distinctly boggy, too, a quality that would have been just as apparent during antiquity, making the field quite unsuitable for ancient settlement or agriculture. Despite these shortcomings, prospecting by the detectorists produced a coin hoard that marks an extraordinary first for not only the Netherlands, but also continental Europe as a whole. The cache that they unearthed contained gold and silver Roman issues, alongside a collection of gold coins, known as staters, from Britain. These staters name the Iron Age king Cunobelin and were struck in his powerbase at Camulodunum, which is better known today as Colchester. This hybrid assemblage of Roman and British coins has only one close parallel, from Helmingham Hall in Suffolk. Both this eye-catching combination and the date of the latest coins in the hoard, AD 46-47, seemingly make a connection with the Roman conquest of Britain under the emperor Claudius irresistible.
The initial tally recovered by the detectorists was 381 coins. After the find was formally reported to Landscape Heritage Utrecht’s Archaeology Hotline, a further 23 coins were found in the topsoil during subsequent archaeological fieldwork by the Dutch National Cultural Heritage Agency. The most likely explanation is that all the coins came from the same hoard, which had been deposited in a small pit, in a remote area that was otherwise devoid of archaeological features or finds. The contents of the hoard consisted of 288 silver coins, 72 gold aurei, and 44 of the British gold staters. At the time of deposition, the total value of these coins would have been almost 11 times the annual wage of a legionary soldier – a tidy sum by anyone’s reckoning. The coins were struck over a wide timespan, with the silver coinage dominated by issues from the Republican period, the oldest dating to 200 BC. A single coin minted under Juba I, king of Numidia from 60 BC to 46 BC, can also be counted among their number. The aurei run back as far as the emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14), and include examples minted by Tiberius (AD 14-38) and Claudius (AD 41-54), but not Claudius’ predecessor Caligula (AD 38-41). Although the British staters only name Cunobelin, who ruled over a group known as the Catuvellauni from roughly AD 5 to AD 40, it is believed that four of the coins were issued posthumously and incorporate symbols referencing his sons. What, then, can we learn from the presence of this singular assemblage in an otherwise archaeologically unremarkable corner of the Netherlands?
Caligula and Claudius
To understand the events that ultimately led to the deposition of the hoard, we must turn to the reign of the emperor Caligula. The ancient literature portrays him as an unpredictable leader with a fondness for wild schemes, and an interest in acquiring Britain. This reportedly culminated in an extraordinary episode when Caligula drew up his forces on the north coast of the continent opposite Britain, and then ordered his soldiers to gather seashells as spoils of his victory over Ocean. Given Caligula’s capricious character, it would be natural to suspect that this bizarre spectacle was the consequence of an imperial whim to invade Britain without undertaking sufficient preparatory work. The archaeology, though, tells a rather different story.
‘The significance of the Lower Rhine region to the Roman invasion of Britain is a relatively recent discovery,’ says Jasper de Bruin, Curator of the Roman Collection at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden (the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities), ‘which has only emerged over the last 25 years. It had long been appreciated that a conspicuous number of coins issued under Caligula had been found at many of the Roman forts in the area, even though these bases were generally thought to be later foundations. We know that in 41, after Caligula was murdered, his coins were taken out of circulation. Eventually, people started to think that the simplest explanation for the presence of so many coins was that they had been lost before being withdrawn from use – that is, during his reign. Then, 20 years ago, the small Roman fort of Alphen aan den Rijn was excavated and yielded dendrochronological dates of AD 40-41, showing that the wood for it came from trees felled under Caligula. We also have a new dendrochronological date from the legionary fortress at Valkenburg, which suggests it was built in AD 40. That fits with its Roman name – Praetorium Agrippinae – apparently referencing Caligula’s mother.’
‘On top of this, after the decision was taken to erase Caligula’s name following his death, a number of his coins were given a very specific new countermark that abbreviated the official title of the new emperor Claudius. The presence of lots of these countermarked coins in the Lower Rhine suggests that there were already plenty of people there – especially soldiers – during this period of transition. Now, the Rhine itself was not the edge of Roman control in the region at that time: there was another fort to the north at Velsen. So, why would there be a sudden need to build and man a line of forts creating a protective transport corridor behind it? We now tend to think that this new network of forts was initially set up by Caligula in preparation for the conquest of Britain. In the end, it was the emperor Claudius who was the beneficiary.’
FURTHER INFORMATION
The original 381 coins found from the hoard are now on permanent display at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, in ‘The Netherlands in Roman Times’ gallery. The partners in the project also include Landscape Heritage Utrecht’s Archaeology Hotline and the Dutch National Cultural Heritage Agency. CWA is grateful to Jasper de Bruin.
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CWA 130. Read on in the magazine (Click here to subscribe) or on our website, The Past, which offers all of the magazine’s content digitally. At The Past you will be able to read each article in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and Military History Matters.
