Currency Bar Bay Leaf

Iron currency bars are among the most debated objects in British Iron Age studies. Caesar's brief note in *De Bello Gallico* that the Britons used iron bars as a medium of exchange is the only ancient written source, and numismatists still argue about whether these objects functioned as currency at all, or as standardised trade blanks for smiths. The bay-leaf form is one of the more refined variants, suggesting at minimum a degree of intentional shaping beyond raw commodity iron.