HOARD

Robertson 2000, 199-200 no. 819:

""A report on the mine has been published by J. and N. Tuck as Caving Report No. 15 (1971) of the Bristol Exploration Club. It is a wholly artificial cutting in the Dolomite of Cefn-pwll-du - 'hill of the black pit' - and at present is the most certainly Roman lead-silver mine in the country. There are substantial signs of Roman interest in the ore, both here (especially at Machen in the valley of the Rhymney a little to the east) and at Risca (in the valley of the Ebbw) where a bath-house containing stamped bricks of the Second Augustan Legion was partly explored many years ago. As far as is known, Roman mining belongs essentially to the first and second centuries, and it is therefore no surprise to find that evidence of counterfeiting in the Cefn-pwll-du mine is stratigraphically related to a period when the mine had been abandoned.
The site of the discovery lies some 45 m from the present entrance, but it is possible that one of a number of vertical shafts may have provided access in ancient times: such shafts are not untypical of Roman mine-workings in Spain and Gaul. The material occurred around the remains of a hearth associated with a little coarse pottery of the third century on top of a mass of miners' 'deads'.
By comparison with White Woman's Hole [Somerset] [no. 1308], the material is very small in quantity, but a good deal more must lie beneath the excavated level in the 'deads' and possibly in the hearth, which Mr. and Mrs. Tuck decided not to disturb.
The material was deposited by the land-owners, the Tredegar Estate, in the National Museum of Wales through the good offices of the Forestry Commission (acc. no. 66.518).":
Ant.
Claudius II 1
Tetricus I 1
hammered and cut pieces
of coin 2
blank flans 4
sections of cut rod 3 small scraps 14
(worn; clipped and hammered to an oval shape 14 by 10 mm, 1.0' [sic] g)
(clipped and hammered as above, 13 by 10 mm, 0.87 g, pl. 5)
(1 square, 10 mm, 1.00 g, the other irregular)
(13 by 10 mm, 0.79 g; 9 mm, part missing; 7 mm, 0.74 and 0.45 g)
(diam. 7 mm, average wt. 0.89 g)
(weighing less than 2 g in all)
-G.C. Boon, in Proc. Univ. of Bristol Spelaeological Soc., 13 (1972), 74"