The Verulamium (1960) Hoard of ‘Barbarous Radiates’

This small hoard was found in the clay and rubble filling of a shallow cellar in a house in Insula XIX. It had presumably been lost in the course of demolition and rebuilding. It cannot match either in interest or importance the famous Verulamium Theatre Hoard which Tessa Wheeler published in 1937, but it is still well worth notice. The Theatre Hoard showed conclusively that even the crudest or smallest of radiate copies were in circulation before c. A.D. 300 and made it hard to argue any longer for the production of such coinage in post-Roman Britain. Other evidence has since proved that all radiate imitation was more or less contemporary—in Britain as in Gaul.