Gloucester, Gloucestershire, 54 copper alloy denarii and 15322 copper alloy radiates to AD 296

Abstract

Britain has produced some 600 known hoards terminating with coins of Carausius and Allectus, though there are significant differences between them in terms of the proportions of the ‘British’ (should that now be ‘Britannic’?) usurpers' coins they contain. In their 1988 publication of the contemporary Normanby hoard, Bland and Burnett suggested that this large group could be divided into four categories depending on the relative quantities of Carausian/Allectan coins compared with earlier coins and/or issues of the legitimate emperors Diocletian and Maximian (with an additional fifth category proposed by Besly in his 2006 catalogue and discussion of the Rogiet hoard). The Gloucester hoard counts as a ‘legitimist’ hoard in that it comprises a substantial number of coins struck after the reform of Aurelian in a.d. 274 — termed ‘Aureliani’ to distinguish them from earlier radiates — as well as far more coins of the first Tetrarchy than of the British usurpers (1,453 compared to 34).Unravelling the complexities of late third-century hoarding in Britain was not, however, a priority for the volume's editors, a challenge which will have to await another day. Instead, its virtues lie in presenting new numismatic data, either in the form of new hoards or, in the Gloucester case, in publishing in detail an old but extremely important find, albeit exactly 50 years after its discovery. The main reason for the delay, as noted in the Preface, is because a large proportion of the hoard comprises coins issued after the Aurelianic reform that are relatively rare elsewhere (some extremely so), while the standard numismatic reference for the period has long been obsolete (the fifth volume of Roman Imperial Coinage was published in two parts in 1927 and 1933). Fortunately, the publication of both the La Venèra hoard by Estiot and, subsequently, the Rogiet hoard by Besly ensured that by 2006 the state of numismatic knowledge had developed sufficiently to facilitate the production of an up-to-date catalogue of the Gloucester hoard.