Silver Unit Canterbury Dragon

The Cantii occupied the southeastern corner of Britain — roughly modern Kent — and were among the tribes Caesar encountered during his expeditions of 55 and 54 BC. These silver units were struck in the decades immediately following that contact, a period when Kentish tribes were navigating the political fallout of Roman intervention without yet falling under direct Roman administration. The coinage reflects a society reorganizing its exchange systems under external pressure rather than internal collapse.

The "Dragon" designation within the Canterbury series distinguishes specific die groupings catalogued by Van Arsdell; ABC 243 places this type within a broader sequence of fractional silver issues whose exact tribal attribution to the Cantii remains the scholarly consensus but not without occasional challenge.