1/4 Silver Stater 'Durotrigan I'

The Durotriges occupied what is now Dorset and parts of Somerset and Wiltshire, and their coinage tells a story of deliberate, progressive debasement — this quarter stater falls within the earlier, higher-silver phase before the tribe's issues deteriorated into essentially tin-washed base metal. That decline tracks directly with the mounting pressure of Roman encroachment in the decades before the Claudian invasion of 43 AD. Hoards from Dorset, particularly around the hillfort at Maiden Castle, have produced concentrations of Durotrigan issues suggesting rapid burial during periods of instability.