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Silver Unit - East Wiltshire Snake Head
| Issuer | Dobunni tribe (Celtic Britain) |
|---|---|
| Year | 15 BC - 30 AD |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Stylised lunar head facing right in the La Tène decorative tradition, featuring a prominent boss on the chin, sinuous wavy lines representing hair, and a pellet-in-ring motif forming the eye. The lips are rendered as a stalk or beak-like projection. Two coffee-bean or lenticular pellet motifs appear in the field before and above the head, with a sunburst or radiating pellet motif positioned near the nose, imparting a dynamic, abstract quality characteristic of late British Iron Age coinage. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
The Dobunni occupied a territory centered on what is now Gloucestershire and the surrounding region, and their coinage tradition developed relatively late compared to neighboring tribes — largely through contact with Gaulish prototypes filtering across the Channel. The "Snake Head" series represents one of the more localized variants within Dobunnic silver, struck in the decades bracketing the Claudian invasion and almost certainly falling out of use after 43 AD when Roman monetary authority displaced native issues.
Find distribution clusters around Bagendon, the probable Dobunnic administrative center, suggesting these small units circulated within a tightly bounded economic zone rather than through interregional exchange.