My friend Adrian Marsden, who is the numismatist with the Norfolk Historic Environment Service, and often involved in identifying coins found by treasure hunters, was back on the BBC News website yesterday with an interesting find.
This was an Anglo-Saxon replica of a gold solidus issued by the Emperor Honorius. It is not a forged coin but a copy as it includes a suspension loop. Roman coins were clearly prized as personal jewellery or talismans in the centuries after the Western Empire disintegrated and this quite skilful copy in gold shows that there was a market for such copies.
The piece was found in a field at Attleborough in southern central Norfolk and not in connection with other items of specie. Whether it was lost, or has been moved over the centuries by ploughing, or if it had once been buried with its owner is unknown. It is however a further insight into the post-Roman world of Anglo-Saxon settlers and their sense of Roman civilisation as it crumbled around them.
The illustrated article can be seen at Anglo-Saxon coin pendant found at Attleborough is 'very unusual'
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