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Coinage in Celtic society

Even where paramount kingdoms did twist, the subordinate kings retained autonomy within thcir own terńtories and might strike coinage of their own. morę locaiized in distribution and sometimes of Iower v alue than that of the paramount himself. Sonie such situation probably accounts for the confusing and overlapping distributions of sonie contemporaneous coinages in Celtic warrior terńtories every\vhere, but above all in Belgie Caul and Britain (ter chapters 6-7).

The introduction of coinage in the Celtic world

It is interesting that so long as the coinage of a pres tigious extemal community was freely available as reward for mercenary service, few Celtic tribal authorities actually struck much coinage of their own. But when this contact was severed, as happened every where when Romę conquered mercenary-using communities, then free Celtic communities sometimes began to strike independent coinages, adapting types familiar from successful relationships in the past.

Thus the history of mercenary contact with Mediterranean employers between the mid fourth century and the 270s bc only gave rise to imitative coinages from the mid third century onwards. as the odginał relationships were severed by Romę. A majority of Celtic coinages everywhere in fact originated no earlier than the end of the third century when Rome’s advance within the Mediterranean sphere began in earnest. In a much later historical context. but for similar reasons, British Celtic coinage only really got under way when the Continental Belgie communities that had supplied coin to British warriors for several generations were deprived of their autonomy by Romę.

By the time that Celtic coinages were first struck, the regional structure of Celtic Europę was already well formed, and from the outset many distinctive regional groupings can be traced from coinage distributions. Owing to the special place which military activity, and therefore also the principal medium of payment for it, occupied in any Celtic society, from the third until the first century bc coinage is one of the most eloquent sources for the history of the late Iron Age Celts.

One phenomenon that can be observed in virtually every region of the coin-using Celtic world seems to relate to the progress of interna! Celtic social development during the period of extended contact with the Roman empire between 200 and 58 bc for the Continental Celts, and 50 bc and ad 43 for Britain. This phenom-enon is a threc-phase progression from an initial, first-phase, high-value coinage bearing what may at times be a bewildering variety of different types and often with very unclear geographical distributions, to a second phase of morę organized coinage, still of relatively high value but with fewer types and morę clearly defined geographical distributions; to a third and finał phase characterized by relativeły few regional types, the introduction of Iow value fractional coinages, sometimes in bronze, and the most clearly defined of all geographical distributions. This progression, which recurs in some form in almost everv area, may tentatively be linked with social development from a comparatively primitive (i.e. complez) tribal organization towards something morę closeły resembling political statehood as known in the Mediterranean world.

The first phase

Thus, the earliest phase of coinage is likely to have been the product of a society with many competing though individually wealthy district chiefs within each region, perhaps acknowledging a shared tribal or ethnic identity, but with no centralized military overlordship such as might have given rise to a unified coinage. This is the situation described. for instanee, by the historians Polybius and Livy as prevailing among the Celts of the western Alps and northern Italy at the time of HannibaPs invasion in 218 bc, a time when the earliest (first-phase) north Italian silver and transalpine gold coinages were actually already in existence. Under this dispensation, each tribal grouping had a number of different chiefs (described as ‘lords of strongholds’ or ‘kinglets’: principes castelli or regali) who might or might not eo-operate with one another and had to be negotiated with individua)ły by Hannibal. In such a social environment shared tribal identity was reinforced by ceremoniał means, for example the Cisalpine Gauls had a tempie of ‘Athena’ (i.e. a Celtic warrior goddess) in which sacred military standards called ‘immovable’ were kept. A district nobility such as this often took divergent courses of action in a crisis, and those who were capable of striking a coinage naturally did so to finance their own military enterprises. In the mid first

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