Cantiaci 1st Century BC Thumbs Up Gold Stater *Extremely Rare*
£6,750.00
Cantiaci
1st Century BC Thumbs Up Gold Stater
Extremely Rare
ABC 186, 20mm, 5.56g
Obverse
Traces of design.
Reverse
Horse right, annulet (two concentric circles) on chest, clumpy hooves. Fist with thumb up above. Large wheel made up of a small circle at the centre with a large circle for the rim connected by four sets of double spokes, below.
Evans: B13 (1864, p. 69, pl. B).
Allen Type: British Lz3.
Van Arsdell Classification: Trinovantian F, Later Uninscribed Gold coins, Late Whaddon Chase Type. Note that Van Arsdell has this as a Trinovantian coin.
Sills DK 65 (2 obverse dies, one with flaw, 5 reverse dies): Coinage of Kent, Uninscribed Issues; Type: Hand and Canopy Issues; Staters: Class 1 – Hand. Sills says the crude, heavy Hand and Canopy issues were struck at a similar time to the finely-engraved, lighter Ribbon issues. The obverse die is a reused die from a North Thames series with strong links to Kent (ABC 2237), with the Hand type later than the SS type. It might even be that the Hand series was struck by a group displaced from the north of the Thames. The horse, with pellet on shoulder, is like the Weald types.
Provenance
This coin is from The London Collection of Ancient British Coins. For more information click here: The London Collection – Silbury Coins : Silbury Coins.
C Rudd FPL 131, no 6, Ex Westerham Hoard, Kent 2009-10, VA 1507
This coin comes with a previous label.
Cantiaci
‘Of all the Britons the inhabitants of Kent, an entirely maritime district, are by far the most civilised, differing but little from the Gallic manner of life.’
Caesar, De Bello Gallico, book V, chapter 13.
The modern county of Kent was, according to the Romans, the homeland of the Cantiaci or Cantii. The closest portion of mainland Britain to the Continent, it is unsurprising that in the Late Iron Age the region boasted strong links with north-east France – a legacy maintained to this day, one could argue, with the continued importance of Dover and Folkestone as key cross-channel ferry ports.
Kent’s earliest Iron Age coins (and indeed, probably the earliest indigenously-produced British coins) are represented by cast bronze pieces called potins, whose alloy has a high tin content. On the basis of single finds and hoards, we know that imported gold in the form of Gallo-Belgic coinage was widely used in Kent at around the same time as the potins.
The somewhat mysterious series of uninscribed Kentish gold, including the so-called ‘Weald Net’ staters (ABC 177/BMC 2466) and ‘Corded Triangle’ quarter staters (ABC 198/BMC 2469–71) were probably struck c. 50–30/25 BC, they perhaps slightly precede a diverse group of uninscribed silver and bronze issues.
Inscribed issues belong towards the end of the Kentish coin-sequence, as is invariably the general case in Late Iron Age Britain. Their production probably began from c. 25 BC onwards and runs onward till shortly before the Claudian invasion. It is worth noting that at this time, Kent seems to have been taken over to varying extents by rulers from neighbouring regions. These rulers in turn came to issue coins in the region, even though they themselves might not originate from it, nor it reflect their main power-base.
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