The Gloucester Hoard
And other coin hoards of the Britannic Empire

Coin hoards from Roman Britain XIII Richard Abdy, Edward Besly & Fernando López-Sánchez

The thirteenth volume of Coin Hoards from Roman Britain provides the first full catalogue of the 1960 Gloucester Hoard upon the fiftieth anniversary year of its discovery. The hoard consists of over fifteen thousand base metal coins of the later third century AD. Ninety-nine per cent of the coins are of the emperor Aurelian and his successors up to the joint reign of Diocletian and Maximian (AD 270-93) and these aureliani are far rarer coins in Britain (as single finds or hoards) than those of the preceding period. This rarity has inhibited production of a full catalogue during the intervening half century, a difficulty which has only recently been overcome by modern research on the coinage of this period. The study of the hoard has also enabled the opportunity to perform an extensive analysis of the metallic composition of aureliani using the latest scientific techniques and to understand how they represent a ‘reform’ on what went before.

 Gloucester terminates in the reign of the British usurper Allectus. This volume of CHRB takes the opportunity to publish other recent discoveries whose termini post quem are also rooted in the ‘Britannic’ Empire of Carausius and Allectus (AD 286-96). These include Elveden II (Suffolk) which comprises almost exclusively the issues of these two usurpers, and at 627 coins forms the largest hoard of its class so far found. In addition, the Ashbourne (Derbyshire) hoard has added two new gold aurei of Carausius to what is a select corpus of only 25 known specimens.  

Richard Abdy is a curator at the Department of Coins and Medals, the British Museum, Edward Besly is Curator of Numismatics, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales and Dr Fernando López-Sánchez is a research fellow at the University Jaime I (Castellon, Spain) / Wolfson College (Oxford).

	Coin hoards from Roman Britain XIII Richard Abdy, Edward Besly & Fernando López-Sánchez MONETA 113, 280 pages, 140 euros "Voir une page" planche 1. ISBN 978-90-77297-81-0
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