Coin collectors and dealers' lobbyists are always banging on about how the coins they collect "all come from hoards" and how "no hoards are found on archaeological sites". They say they were always buried in out-of-the-way places and never on archaeological sites. Some claim they were always buried on the edges of battlefields and (romantically) the owner never survived the carnage to collect them. All nonsense of course. Here is another one they will ignore ('Hoard of Roman coins found near Roman Baths in Bath', BBC News 22 March 2012) More than 30,000 Roman coins were found by archaeologists working in Bath in 2007, it has been revealed. The silver coins are believed to date from 270AD and have been described as the fifth largest UK hoard ever found. The coins are fused together and were sent to the British Museum. Conservators are expected to take at least a year to work through them. A campaign has now been started at the Roman Baths to try to raise £150,000 to acquire and display them. [...] "The find is also unusual as it was discovered by professional archaeologists as opposed to an amateur using a metal detector,".Well, that's a shame isn't it? that we can see the whole context - when it turns out that hoards like these sometimes DO have an archaeological context. Like in the middle of one of the most cosmopolitan centres of the southern region of the province. The archaeologists were working (since 2008 it says) at the site of the Gainsborough Hotel in Beau Street about 140 metres from the historic Roman Baths. This “Beau Street Hoard” is the "fifth largest hoard ever discovered in Britain and the largest from a Roman settlement".
Vignette: an ancient Roman trying to remember where he left those coins in the centre of the city of Aquae Sulis.
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