HOARD

De Jersey (2015) writes:

""It was at 11am on March 17, 1996" says Murphy. "Two hundred and six gold staters, one ring and one penannular bracelet. We found that dirt rubs off gold. You just rub it and there it is."
Mail on Sunday "Night & Day", 4 August 1996
The hoard of 206 staters, plus associated items, was accompanied by a second, smaller hoard, containing fifty staters, located just 20-30 cm away from the first. Although it would appear that the larger hoard was found first, this hoard has generally been described as Alton II - for example in the BM accession numbers, and in the report by Cheesman (1998), which focuses on the new reading of Tincomarus - and this nomenclature has been respected here. The contents of the two hoards may thus be summarized as follows:
Commios
Eppillus
Tincomarus
Verica
other items
total
Alton I
12
21
17
-
-
50
Alton II
-
-
200
6
2
206 + 2 In the newspaper account quoted above, Mr Murphy goes on to describe how he dug down about a foot to retrieve a single gold coin, and as he "bent down to get it out they all started falling into the hole from the sides." Any container is thus likely to have been organic; although a number of sherds were presented "with" the coins and other objects, they came from at least eighteen different vessels, none of which were likely to have been directly associated with the hoards. It has been suggested that the pottery represents domestic rubbish from a nearby late Iron Age settlement (BMHF; Whinney and Walker 1980). A small amount of archaeological excavation took place following the discovery, but as the precise location of the hoards within a field of 20-25 ha had not been recorded, this provided no further information on their context. The hoards were however said to have been buried close to the highest point of the field.
As the table above should demonstrate, the nature of the coins in the two hoards is quite different. The fifty staters in Alton I are all in typically "Celtic" style, while the larger Alton II contains only staters of what can broadly be described as a classical style, together with the two pieces of imported jewellery. The hoards were buried in such close proximity that it is difficult to believe that they were not deposited at the same time, perhaps very early in Verica's reign, in which case it seems that a conscious decision was made to separate the "Celtic" and "classical" coins.
In April 2000 a single stater of Addedomaros (ABC 2517, 5.46 g) was reported by the same finders. The Coroner decided "on the balance of probability" that it was part of the original find, but there remain significant doubts about its provenance and it has not been included in the lists here. The CCI also includes one further Tincomarus stater in a private collection which was reportedly found with the larger hoard."