Hundreds of gold and silver coins buried 2,000 years ago unearthed by metal detectorists in the Netherlands

Hundreds of Roman-era gold and silver coins were found in a field outside a village in the Netherlands, officials announced this week. 

The coins are thousands of years old, the Netherlands’ Cultural Heritage Agency said in a news release, and are a mix of Roman and British coins. Bunnik, the village where they were buried, was once along the northern border of the Roman Empire. It’s the first time such a find has been made on the European mainland, the agency said, with the only other comparable discovery having been made in Great Britain. 

Two metal detectorists made the discovery, then formally reported the coins to authorities. An archaeologist then examined the findings to confirm their veracity, and a larger excavation was conducted. 

The majority of the artifacts were Roman coins dated between 46 and 47 A.D., around the end of the first Roman conquests in Britain, and were primarily stamped with the portrait of the Emperor Claudius. Nearly 300 of the Roman coins are silver denarii, minted between 200 B.C. and 47 A.D. Some of those coins are stamped with unique portraits, including several of Julius Caesar and one with the face of Juba, the king of a Northern African region that is present-day Algeria, according to a news release from the National Museum of Antiquities in the Netherlands. 

Also found among the Roman coins were 72 gold aurei, dated from 18 B.C. to 47 A.D. Those coins show no signs of wear and likely came from a pile of freshly minted coins, according to the Cultural Heritage Agency. 

Several dozen other coins, made of an alloy of gold, silver and copper, come from what is now Great Britain and were stamped with the face of the Celtic king Cunobelinus, who reigned between 9 and 40 A.D. The king’s name was also inscribed on the coins, known as “staters.”

Roman soldiers returning home likely carried the coins from Britain to Bunnik, the agency said. The British coins may have been spoils of war, while the Roman coins were likely being carried as currency. They may have been buried to hide them temporarily, or as an offering to the gods, possibly as “an expression of gratitude to the gods for a safe return from battle,” the agency said. 

The Cultural Heritage Agency said the find shows the importance of the Lower Germanic limes, or a series of fortification points along the border between the Roman Empire’s Germanic provinces. The limes existed from 83 to about 260 A.D., according to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and separated the empire from Germanic tribes. The coins show that Roman troops returning from Britain used these points as a route to return home. 

Three hundred and eighty-one of the 404 coins were purchased by the National Museum of Antiquities. The coins can now be viewed as part of a permanent exhibition at the National Archaeology Collection, the agency said.