Peter Stewart has recently drawn to our attention the website of Dr Murray Andrews, an archaeological numismatist. An article entitled “Roman coins from the Vale of Evesham in the A E Jones and P Stewart collections” first appeared in the Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, 3rd series, Vol 26 (2018), pp 44-62. This may be viewed as a PDF on his publications page.
In 2021, Dr Andrews wrote a subsequent article about the relocation of two more Roman coins found by Arthur Jones at Badsey:
Badsey Fields revisited: two more Roman coins from the A E Jones collection
In a previous edition of the Society’s Transactions I published an account of 514 Roman coins found in the Vale of Evesham by two local fieldworkers, Arthur Edward Jones (1863-1950) and Peter Stewart (1938-) (Andrews 2018). Since publication two more Roman coins found by Jones at Badsey Fields have been relocated in the collections of Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, and can be described as follows:
- Copper-alloy nummus of Constantine I, AD 327-8. RIC VII Treveri 504. Obverse: CONSTAN TINVS AVG, laureate head right. Reverse: PROVI[D]EN TIAE AVGG//STRE, Camp gate with two turrets, star above. Mint of Trier. Die axis 180°. Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, accession no. 1977.300
- Copper-alloy nummus of Constantine I, AD 327-8. RIC VII Treveri 504 or 509. Obverse: CONSTAN TINVS AVG, laureate head right. Reverse: [PROVIDEN T]IAE AV[GG]//[...]RE, Camp gate with two turrets, star above. Mint of Trier. Die axis 180°. Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, accession no. 1977.301
The rediscovery of these nummi raises the total number of coins found at the Badsey Fields site to 11. This small assemblage exhibits the mid-fourth century ‘peak’ in coin loss familiar to many rural settlements from Roman Britain: reasonable parallels can be found in the villa at Rockbourne, Hampshire, as well as the putative villa or rural settlement at Badsey Fields Lane, Worcestershire (Reece 1991; Andrews 2018). An updated summary of the coin-loss profiles for the Vale of Evesham sites, integrating these new specimens, is presented in Table 1 below.1
Bibliography
- Andrews, M., 2018 ‘Roman coins from the Vale of Evesham in the A.E. Jones and P. Stewart collections’, Trans. Worcs. Archaeol. Soc., 3S, 26, 43-62.
- Reece, R., 1991 Roman coins from 140 sites in Britain, Cirencester.
1 This table corrects an Excel calculation error present in the original publication, which resulted in ‘barbarous radiates’ being miscounted in issue period 260-275 instead of 275-296.
Images of the coin
Peter Stewart has provided images of a similar coin from Badsey mentioned above. On his coin the letter E is absent from the mintmark of STRE.
