- Coinage -
compared with resident native populations, but they seem to have been influential
among their new neighbours all the same. They were almost certainly instrumental
in maintaining a current of social contact that involved all manner of traditional inter-
change with Picardy and the Seine Basin, in the course of which Belgic coinage was
introduced into south-eastern Britain. Only four examples of the earliest types of
third-or early-second-century Belgic gold coinage have been found in Britain, three
of them in Kent, but later Belgic coinage entered Britain in enormous quantities
starting in the mid-or late second century Be (Haselgrove 1992). The Belgae estab-
lished ties with non-Belgic British communities as well, and during Caesar's wars in
Gaul, British tribes gave military assistance to the Gauls, paid for, undoubtedly, in the
Belgic gold coinage of the day, which flooded into Britain.
The process of introduction of Belgic coinage to Britain and subsequent British
adoption of their own types based on Belgic prototypes (Table 14.2) has therefore
much in common with the way in which Mediterranean coinage gave rise to Celtic
continental coinages in the first place. By contrast with Armorican coinage, that of
Belgic Gaul and its immediate neighbours had a profound and lasting impact upon
British coinage, suggesting a quite different level of involvement between the two
areas of northern Gaul and Britain.
Having begun to produce coinage of their own during the late second and early
first century Be, the native communities of southern Britain went on to develop one
of the most sophisticated coinage systems anywhere in the Celtic world. This took
place above all during a period of lively diplomatic and trading contact with the
Romans in Gaul between eso Be and AD 43 which fostered dynastic expansion
among the leading tribes of central-southern and eastern Britain (Haselgrove 1992;
d. Mack 1975; Van Arsdell 1989).
The relentless advance of the Roman Empire affected relations among the Celts
not only by promoting the internal development of allies, favoured trading partners,
and other members of their supply networks, but also by conquest of successive
Celtic societies close to their borders, starting with Cisalpine Gaul in 191-100 Be,
then Provence and Languedoc in 121 Be, the rest of Gaul in 58-52 Be, Noricum in
C.35-16 Be, the Alps in 14 Be, and finally southern Britain in AD 43-60. In each case,
native gold coinage, which had no place in the Roman economy, came promptly
to an end. Some version of native silver and bronze coinage often went on being
produced for a generation or so in the new Roman provinces, until metropolitan
Roman coinage was fully established in circulation (Nash 1987: 23 ff.).
When the Roman conquest of Britain finally extinguished native coinage in the
60S AD, it also brought the entire history of Celtic coinage to an end. Beyond the
Roman frontier in Britain, Celtic societies that had never used coinage of any sort
took their turn to be the closest neighbours of the Roman Empire, making alliances,
doing trade, being preyed upon, and accumulating wealth and prestige, but without
ever adopting coinage for their own use. The Romans did not employ mercenary
soldiers, nor did they, or their British provincial subjects, ever seem to use coinage
in any other very systematic way in dealing with the Scots and the Irish. Although,
therefore, plenty of Roman coinage did cross the imperial frontier in the course of
three and a half centuries, it almost certainly did so in a haphazard, incidental way.
Unlike the continental Celts and the southern British who had evidently already