Late Iron Age coin hoards with silver rainbow staters from Graetheide (NL) and the mid-1st century BC hoard horizon in the Lower Rhine / Meuse region

Abstract

In 2018 and 2019 amateur metal detectorists reported the find of Late Iron Age silver coins at three locations in Graetheide in the Dutch province of Limburg. In November 2018 archaeologists from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands carried out small-scale control excavations at two sites. The investigations show that we are dealing with small coin hoards of silver ‘rainbow staters’, a coin type that circulated in the Lower Rhine / Meuse region in the mid-1^st century BC. The new finds confirm that there was a significant regional peak in the hoarding of precious metal coins during this period. The peak can be dated to the 50s BC, suggesting a link with Caesar’s military campaigns. In his De Bello Gallico, the Roman general describes at length how – in 53 and again in 51 BC – his legions plundered and burned the territory of the Eburones with the aim of totally annihilating the tribe. The gold and silver hoards can be regarded as silent testimony to a dramatic episode in the history of the Roman empire’s Lower Germanic frontier zone.