Gold Stater British Af1 Lepe

The Atrebates were almost certainly introduced to Gallo-Belgic coinage traditions through direct contact with continental tribes — possibly refugees or warriors crossing the Channel in the decades before Caesar's invasions of 55 and 54 BC. These staters derive ultimately from Macedonian gold prototypes that had traveled northwest through trade and mercenary payment over roughly two centuries, degrading in design with each regional reinterpretation. The Lepe findspot, on the Hampshire coast, places this type squarely in Atrebatic heartland territory.

Caesar's campaigns created immediate monetary disruption among southern British tribes, accelerating the shift toward locally struck coinage with increasingly abstract imagery.