Human Origins / Prehistoric Culture

A hoard of worn bronze Roman coins (below) and metalworking remains unearthed in northern England suggest that Britons in the first century A.D. had found a crafty way to exploit their rulers' newfangled monetary system. "Most of the 70 coins are so worn down that markings are illegible, so they literally had no face value," says an archaeologist at the University of Newcastle, Lindsay Allason-Jones, who is analyzing the cache. But enterprising locals apparently made sure those coins didn't go unused. Traces of bronze on metalworking waste located nearby indicate that the Brits melted down the coins and refashioned them into trinkets to sell back to the Romans.


"We know native Britons made brooches and other small items out of bronze to sell at Roman military camps," Allason-Jones says. These items may also have been used as alternate currency to settle taxes. She speculates that the recycled cash helped compensate for high tariffs set by imperial administrators, which led to a tax revolt in southern England around this time. The recycled coins show that northern Brits were surprisingly shrewd businessmen. "They were barterers who would have looked at the coins suspiciously, the way people were initially suspicious of credit cards. But it probably didn't take them long to figure out how to use them to their own advantage," Allason-Jones says.